New foot-speed metric shows Hamilton is MLB's fastest baserunner
Although it appeared to be obvious, a new baseball stat recently proved Cincinnati Reds outfielder Billy Hamilton, is indeed the game's fastest baserunner.
In April, Statcast introduced a new metric, Sprint Speed, that measures speed in terms of "feet per second in a player's fastest one-second window."
Upon its release, the metric only measured the speed of outfielders on defense, but it has since been updated and MLB recently provided a leaderboard of the game's fastest baserunners.
| PLAYER | TEAM | POS | SPRINT SPEED (ft/sec) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Billy Hamilton | CIN | OF | 30.1 |
| Byron Buxton | MIN | OF | 29.9 |
| Bradley Zimmer | CLE | OF | 29.8 |
| Franchy Cordero | SD | OF | 29.6 |
| Keon Broxton | MIL | OF | 29.4 |
The nimble Hamilton, who has stolen 215 bases since arriving in the big leagues in 2013, sits atop the leaderboard ahead of Minnesota Twins outfielder Byron Buxton.
With second baseman Dee Gordon being the exception, the top 10 fastest baserunners in the league are all outfielders.
One eye-catching name on MLB's leaderboard is Miami Marlins backstop J.T. Realmuto, who clocks in 28.7, good for 20th fastest in the league and comparable to Adam Eaton, Alen Hanson, Cody Bellinger, Brett Gardner, and Jose Pirela.