MLB 30 Yard Times

MLB 30-yard times

The easiest way to measure baseball sprint times is 30 yard splits from topped or weakly hit ground balls and extra base hits. MLB captures this data and publishes the results on the Baseball Savant running splits leaderboard. It shows us a range of 30 yard times from Elly De La Cruz at an average of 3.67 seconds to Yasmani Grandal who’s at the other end at 4.67 seconds, a full second slower. The average across players was 4.02 seconds, which is Max Muncy’s time as well. This visualization shows the comparison between the three on a sprint to first.

As you can see the, the one second time difference between De La Cruz and Grandal translates into almost 20 feet on the bases. There are some differences between times of left-handed and right-handed hitters, which are excluded to keep this simple.

MLB 30-Yard Times and Age

It should come as no surprise, but as players age, they slow down. A 22-year-old player’s average is sub 4.0 at 3.95 seconds, which then slowly creeps up to over 4.25 fifteen years later. As you can see below, speed is pretty stable until age 27 and then it begins to slow rapidly through age 36 after which it just falls off a cliff. There is some survivorship bias in this because the few players that remain after age 30 are likely the best athletes of the group.

30-Yard Splits

Baseball Savant also provides the data in five-foot increments, so we can see the acceleration out of the box and top speed of each player. The average time for the first five feet was 0.55 seconds which then reduces to 0.18 seconds per five feet at the end of the run. This is approximately 19 mph at or 27.8 feet per second, which baseball seems to look at more.

As you can see, Elly De La Cruz is faster literally every step of the way to first base. Given his height, you might expect him to start slow and then have a higher top speed, but that’s not the case. He out of the gate quickly and maintains a higher max speed often achieving bolts along the way. Note that this is Cruz from the left side. He’s 0.06 second slower when hitting right-handed. As we look at the 2024 MLB mock draft, we’ll have to see if there are any new challengers for fastest kid on the block.