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BANG: contact quality per plate appearance

BANG, or ‘BANG Factor’ to use its full government name, is our stat at HeatRadar. It’s an overall measure of how likely a player is to hit the ball at home-run quality each time they come to the plate, combining Statcast exit velocity, distance, and launch angle with contact rate. Strikeouts and walks both count as an identical zero.

The max BANG score for an individual at-bat is 100; most home runs are in the 60–95 range. Per plate appearance, as this table and the rest of the site are sorted: 12+ is elite, 10–12 is great, 7 is average, and below 7 is below average. It’s an ideal measure for home run betting; our HR Model is founded on it. Backtested across 240,852 MLB batter-games, elite-BANG hitters homer 5.4× more often than poor-BANG hitters, and 1.6× more often than league average. The model actually separates who's about to leave the yard from who isn't.

đŸ”„ heating up · đŸ„¶ cooling off · based on last 15 games of BANG/PA vs season pace (more flames/cubes = more extreme)

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How BANG measures MLB contact quality

Most advanced baseball stats split contact quality into separate columns. Exit velocity tells you how hard the ball was hit; launch angle tells you the trajectory; distance tells you how far the ball traveled in the air. Each is useful, but they live in separate Statcast leaderboards, and no single column tells you who’s actually about to leave the yard tonight.

BANG combines them into one number, per plate appearance. Every batted ball gets a 0-100 score based on its exit velocity, launch angle, and hit distance, with the curve calibrated to historical HR outcomes (most actual home runs score 60-95 per BBE). Strikeouts and walks count as zero in the denominator, so a hitter who racks up Ks but rarely barrels up doesn’t rate above one who makes consistent loud contact.

The result: one column to sort, league-wide. 12+ is elite, 10–12 is great, ~7 is average, below 7 is a hitter you can comfortably fade in HR props.

How does BANG compare to xwOBA, barrel rate, and other Statcast metrics?

Statcast already produces a wall of expected stats: xBA, xSLG, xwOBA, xHR. Each is rigorously calibrated for its specific outcome (xwOBA for run value, xBA for hit probability). BANG is different in that it’s calibrated for HR specifically and reported per plate appearance instead of per batted ball event, which is the unit that matters when you’re deciding which players to back in a player-prop or DFS lineup.

If you want the full Statcast metric drill-down (exit velocity leaders, barrel rate leaders, hard-hit %, launch angle distribution), open the Player Stats page. If you want one number that wraps them into HR-likelihood per appearance, this leaderboard is it.

FAQ

Where does BANG come from?

It’s a HeatRadar stat, built from MLB Statcast data. Every batted ball is scored 0-100 by its exit velocity, launch angle, and hit distance, then averaged per plate appearance with strikeouts and walks zeroing the contact slot.

Where is BANG used on the site?

Everywhere. This leaderboard ranks every hitter and pitcher by BANG. The HR Model uses it to project today’s home run picks. The Today’s Pitchers page ranks every starting pitcher by BANG-against (the contact quality they’re giving up). The Bullpens and Team Batting pages roll BANG up by unit and team.

How often does the leaderboard update?

Daily, after the previous night’s games finalize in Statcast (usually around 5am ET).