What is a good exit velocity by age

Exit velocity is the speed of the ball as it leaves the bat. A good number depends almost entirely on age: roughly 50 mph is solid at 10U, around 60 mph at 12U, around 70 mph at 14U, and 80 mph and up starts to stand out in high school. College and professional hitters commonly exceed 90 mph.

Typical exit velocity ranges by age

The ranges below describe max exit velocity, the hardest ball a hitter puts in play, which is the figure showcases and recruiters usually quote. Average exit velocity across all contact is meaningfully lower.

For scale at the top: the average major league batted ball leaves the bat around 89 mph, and a ball hit 95 mph or harder is conventionally counted as hard-hit. A player's hard-hit rate is simply the share of their batted balls that clear that line.

Max exit velocity and average exit velocity are different numbers

Max exit velocity measures ceiling, and average exit velocity measures how consistently a hitter squares the ball up. They answer different questions, and quoting one when someone expects the other is the most common source of confusion in recruiting conversations.

• Max tends to move with strength and bat speed. It is the number that grows fastest during a growth spurt or a serious offseason.
• Average tends to move with contact quality. A hitter who is regularly late, early, or under the ball can post a big max and a mediocre average.
• Tee versus live pitching. Showcase max numbers are often taken off a tee, where a hitter controls timing completely. In-game exit velocity off live pitching is usually lower, and it is the harder number to raise.

Exit velocity alone does not produce hits

A 95 mph ground ball is an out far more often than a 90 mph line drive. Launch angle, the vertical angle the ball leaves the bat, decides what the exit velocity buys you.

Balls hit roughly between 10 and 30 degrees are the productive band for most hitters, which is where line drives and hard fly balls live. Below that, hard contact goes into the ground; well above it, hard contact turns into a fly ball with a lot of hang time. This is why hitters chase hard contact and good angle together, not exit velocity in isolation.

What actually raises exit velocity

Exit velocity is mostly a function of how fast the bat is moving and how squarely it meets the ball. For young players, physical growth drives a large share of the yearly gains, so the ranges above should be read as moving targets rather than fixed standards.

• Bat speed, developed through general strength and rotational power on a long timeline.
• Contact quality, which means hitting the ball on the barrel rather than off the end or near the hands. Miss the barrel and bat speed is wasted.
• Bat fit. A bat that is too heavy costs more in bat speed than it returns in mass. A bat that is too light gives up mass with nothing gained.
• Timing against real pitching, which is what closes the gap between tee numbers and game numbers.

Work with your coaching staff on how to build those, and progress strength work gradually rather than in jumps.

How to track exit velocity

Measure the same way every time. Tee numbers and game numbers are not comparable, and neither are readings from different tools or camera setups, so a trend is only meaningful when the method is held constant.

Baseball Tracker estimates exit velocity and hit outcome from game video, plots every batted ball on a full-field spray chart with exit velocity overlaid, and tracks hard-hit rate and stat history per player over time. Those figures are AI-generated estimates rather than certified measurements, so they are best used to compare a hitter against their own history. For the setup that produces usable video, see how to measure pitch speed with a phone — the same camera-angle and frame-rate rules apply to batted balls.