Dunkirk, NY – I don’t consider myself too much of a stick-in-the-mud when it comes to changes in baseball. I mostly like sabermetrics, I am a fan of the DH, and I very much enjoy watching players play the game with evident flair and enjoyment. But there are some terms creeping into the lexicon of baseball that I find somewhat annoying. The title of the post says it all.
“Velo” is short for “velocity,” and velocity is having a moment in the game. Velocity works two ways: how fast the pitch comes in , and how fast the ball leaves the bay on contact. In the Statcast era, velocity is a new measurement of power. I don’t have a beef with velocity as such, but I really grind my teeth when I hear the phrase “velo.” Almost every broadcaster who wants to sound hip and cool uses “velo” as opposed to “velocity.” It’s now becoming overdone. I’d rather hear “VR” (velocity rate) as the shortcut to velocity than “velo.” Maybe, in the back of my head, I keep hearing “J-Lo,” which makes me think of A-Rod, which makes me ill. It follows the trend of shortening players’ names in some way, like Car-Go, Car-Gone, A-Roid, V-Mart, J-Ram, etc. Enough, already. As Crash Davis once said, “The moment’s over.”
“Oppo” is short for “opposite field.” When a player hits a ball to the opposite field, the new term is now “he goes oppo.” This is one of those terms I am sure ballplayers have used in the past, but now it’s finding its way into the broadcast booth. I’m not a big fan of broadcasters co-opting baseball slang, especially if they never played the game. It sounds too forced and unnatural. A good broadcaster should develop their own style of describing a game, and leave the baseball slang to the players.
“Spin rate” is the newest darling of the pitching mavens, and it measures how fast a ball spins on its axis as it travels to home plate. It is measured in revolutions per minute, and it works to change a ball’s trajectory. I think that the great John Smoltz was the first person I heard to really get into spin rate. “He can spin a baseball,” “he should spin this one up there,” and “he’s spinning a great game” are phrases I’ve heard him use when he’s analyzing a game (by the way, David Cone gets into “velo” in the same way). I have yet to see any measurement of the spin rate on a knuckleball, but since only Steve Wright throws the knuckler in the majors at the moment, I haven’t had the opportunity to see him pitch. You can spin a baseball all you want, but man, is it hard to hit a good knuckler.
We are young into the era of Statcast measurements, and I don’t have anything against them as such. It’s more of a language thing for me, and listening to people talk about these new stats in something of a “hipster” fashion just seems wrong. I know baseball is trying to entice younger fans to come to the game, but I think using these kinds of terms may be as much a turn-off as an enticement. I live in fear of what they will eventually come up with to shorten “launch angle.” -twl