Yahoo Sports senior MLB analyst Jake Mintz discusses the switch from the 60-yard dash to the 30-yard dash at the MLB Draft Combine and its use in evaluating baseball prospects.
Video Transcript
The most famous part of the NFL combine is the 40 yard dash.
And for a long time, baseball’s equivalent of that was the 60 yard dash, but no more, MLB has divided by two scuttling the 60 in favor of the 30.
Now, if this feels very niche and unimportant, maybe that’s true.
But I’m an MLB nerd and I’m here at the draft combine.
So I’m gonna tell you a little bit about the switch from the 60 to the 30 the 60 yard dash.
Those origins are kind of rooted in the Olympics in track and field, but they became very important in baseball scouting as an evaluation tool because frankly, there wasn’t any other objective measure with which to evaluate players.
Nowadays, we have things like exit velocity and launch angle.
We have fastball spin, we have fastball metrics.
There are a lot of other ways to measure athleticism.
That wasn’t the case for a long time.
People just had a stopwatch, their eyeballs in a dream, right?
The thought behind the 60 is that it’s a distance from home to 2nd, 1st to third.
The reason it’s gone by the wayside is because baseball players are never running 60 yards in a perfectly straight line unless there’s a pop up and everyone falls down.
For some reason, the 30 is a much more realistic way to scout players.
The 3030 yards is the distance from home plate to first base, first to 2nd, 2nd to 3rd, 3rd, a home evaluating that straight line speed is really helpful for teams.
Now, the last thing, straight line speed is actually never been as unimportant comparatively to other types of athleticism.
Just because we can evaluate so much with the technology that we have today.
Teams are a little bit less concerned with straight line speed.
That being said there are a few things more entertaining than watching a dude going all out in a straight line.
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