The latest Statcast data shows where every player sets up in the box.
Baseball Savant consistently delivers high quality data and visuals to help fans understand the game in a different way. Their latest update, rolled out in March, quantifies how a batter sets up in the box, their foot movement during their swing, their body’s angle relative to the pitcher, and even where their bat impacts the baseball on average. They have data for hitters going back to 2023, making it rather easy to check on any adjustments players claim to have made, or to hypothesize from afar how best to help a struggling hitter.
Before getting into the details of what your favorite Tigers are doing, let’s define a few of the newest terms I’ll be using throughout. These are all Baseball Savant’s official names and definitions.
Depth in Box: how far behind the front edge of the plate the batter’s center of mass is, measured and reported in inches.
Distance off Plate: how far from the inner edge of the plate the batter’s center of mass is, measured and reported in inches.
Stance Angle: how open the batter’s feet are relative to the pitcher, measured and reported in degrees.
Intercept Point: where the baseball is located, on average, when closest to the bat or impacted for each swing made.
Now we all know what everything means, let’s move onto the fun stuff: superlatives for your 2025 Detroit Tigers !
Crowds the Box – Riley Greene
Among all Tigers hitters, nobody is standing closer to home plate than Riley Greene. He takes a relative neutral stance only 23.9” from home plate, then steps towards home plate even further. This is about the same as last year, but he’s also quite a bit further back. Here’s what that looks like. I’ve highlighted his 2025 set-up for convenience.
Scared of the Ball – Ryan Kreidler and Colt Keith
I suppose this makes sense. After two seasons in a row were derailed by HBPs to the hand, no Tiger is further from home plate than Ryan Kreidler, who’s 30.4” away. That’s actually not that far away (the league leader is 35.5” away) but it does suggest something about his approach. Or maybe he’s always stood there and the HBPs have all been bad luck. Interestingly, it’s also tied with Colt Keith, exactly. There’s less of an obvious reason for that with Keith, who has fewer injuries and shorter arms, but it’s pretty consistent with 2024, too. You can really see the extremes when looking at Keith vs Greene, a fellow lefty.
On top of the Pitcher – Javier Baez
If you’ve watched Tiger baseball in the last 3 years, this might come as a surprise to you. You also know Javier Baez has an issue with sliders. They’ve been his greatest strength at earlier points in his career, and now more of a weakness. After standing a pretty average 27.1” back in the box in 2024, Baez is now only 21.6” away from the front of the plate. Maybe this lets him get to sliders before they really break off into the lefty box; the math guarantees they’ll break less if they have less distance to get to his swing path. He’s also seriously closed his stance off.
I’m hesitant to say this solves his problems, but it’s working so far, and it’s really just good to see him working on these issues and getting some good results rolling. Here’s Baez, the dot closest to the top of the box, compared to every other righty on the team; there’s a pretty big gap between him and Kreidler, the next closest. It’s new, and a little different, considering most of the team has moved further back in the box. Hopefully it works.
Back in the Box – Spencer Torkelson
After a truly terrible 2024, things needed to change. Fans across the country, including our very own community here, were on Tork’s case about being too wide and inflexible at the plate. Apparently, he heard us. He opened his stance, scooted off the plate, and most importantly, narrowed his stance by shortening his front leg considerably, thus shifting back in the box. His back foot barely moved, but center of mass went from 28.1” to 33.7” deep in the box. He cut his stance width from 36.7” to 26.5” between his feet, leaving him in a stronger and more athletic position to load and fire from. Here’s what that looks like, with his 2025 positioning (and feet!) highlighted and contrasted with 2024.
Hopefully, this served as a fun introduction to the Stance Visual tools on baseball savant. There’s a lot of deeper analysis that can, and will, be done, so stay tuned for those. If you’re interested in looking for yourself, here’s the link to that tool specifically; be warned, it’s a little finicky, but there’s lots of good data to be explored. Along with bat speed and swing length data, there’s suddenly a world of hitting data opening up to match the huge amount of information of pitching that’s developed over the first decade of the Statcast era.