What is a Blast? Definition, Formula, and Example
A Blast is a Statcast bat-tracking classification for a swing that both squares the ball up and arrives with fast bat speed — the rarest and most damaging type of contact a hitter can make.
What is a Blast in Baseball?
A Blast is a Statcast bat-tracking label for the most valuable kind of swing: one that squares the ball up *and* does it with a fast bat. Statcast introduced bat tracking in 2024, and Blasts sit at the top of that data — they isolate the swings where a hitter delivered both efficient contact and real bat speed at the same time. A Blast is not a batted-ball outcome like a barrel; it is a property of the swing itself. Hitters who Blast often are the ones who turn the bat into a weapon rather than just putting the ball in play.
How a Blast is Calculated
A Blast combines two bat-tracking inputs measured on contact swings:
- Squared-up rate — how much of the available exit velocity the hitter captured. Statcast flags a ball as squared up when actual exit velocity reaches at least 80% of the theoretical maximum given bat speed and pitch speed.
- Bat speed — swing speed measured six inches from the bat head (the sweet spot). A "fast swing" is 75+ mph.
The strict formula is:
(Squared-up % × 100) + Bat speed (mph) ≥ 164
Equivalently, the average of the squared-up figure and the bat speed must reach 82 for the swing to count as a Blast. That threshold means a hitter cannot Blast on a soft, defensive swing no matter how clean the contact, nor on a violent swing that misses the barrel — both halves of the equation have to show up.
Worked Example
Aaron Judge is the archetype. His bat speed runs around 76–77 mph, well above the MLB average of roughly 71 mph. On a swing where he squares the ball up at, say, 90% — (90) + 77 = 167 — he clears the 164 line easily and the swing registers as a Blast. Across the league in 2024, only about 10% of competitive swings and 27% of batted balls qualified as Blasts, so even elite hitters Blast on a minority of their cuts. Judge sits near the top of the leaderboard precisely because he pairs top-decile bat speed with strong squared-up contact more often than almost anyone.
Why Blasts Matter
Blast rate is a swing-quality signal that shows up *before* results, which makes it valuable for projection. A hitter with a rising Blast rate is generating the inputs that produce hard-hit balls and barrels, even if BABIP luck is hiding it on the surface. Front offices use it to separate genuine power development from hot streaks, and fantasy/DFS players treat it as an early indicator of breakout power. Because it measures the swing rather than the outcome, it is harder to fake over a sample than a string of well-placed singles.
Limitations and Common Misconceptions
A Blast describes the swing, not where the ball lands — a Blasted ball hit directly at a fielder is still an out. It is also frequently confused with a barrel, which is a batted-ball classification based on exit velocity and launch angle; a Blast can occur without a barrel and vice versa. Finally, Blast rate rewards aggression, so contact-oriented hitters who slap singles will post low Blast rates by design without being bad hitters.
Related Terms
In Legends Deck: Blast rate feeds the power and swing-decision components of a hitter's card. Cards with elite Blast rates carry higher ceilings on extra-base outcomes in the simulation engine, so a low-average slugger who Blasts often can still out-damage a higher-contact card when the dice favor power.