A teaching tool, not a ball flight simulator. It shows how bat speed, attack angle, horizontal attack angle, horizontal bat angle, tilt and where the barrel meets the ball work together to send the ball up or down, pull or oppo. Every ball is met on the sweet spot, so read exit velocity as the best that swing can do, not its average. Results are kept inside what real 2025 MLB batted balls did, but the lesson is which way each slider moves the ball, not the exact number.
Swing. The sliders set the bat's speed and angles at contact, the way Statcast measures them. The drawn bat path is a reconstruction around contact, not motion capture.
Contact. The ball comes off a round barrel. Meet it below center and it leaves higher with backspin; above center and it leaves lower with topspin. At offset 0 the ball launches where 2025's squared-up balls launched for that attack angle.
Direction. Where the barrel faces (horizontal bat angle) sets where the ball goes. Where the path moves (horizontal attack angle) sets how hard it is hit: the ball comes off hardest when the path runs the way the ball goes. In real swings the face turns about 1.2° for every 1° of path, so the two move together; tick "Face turns with path" to see that. The default face, 10° toward pull of a straight path, puts landing spots where 2025 hard-hit balls landed. Face and path figures come from 16,248 Driveline motion-capture swings.
Flight. Drag and lift follow Alan Nathan's trajectory calculator. Exit velocity never tops the hardest 2025 ball at that launch angle, and carry lands on the 2025 median for that exit velocity, launch angle and direction. Generic park: 330 / 375 / 400, 8 ft wall, no wind.
Limits. No timing and no mishits along the barrel: every ball is one clean collision. Barrel offset and horizontal bat angle are not in public Statcast data, so treat them as inputs to explore. Spin is described in words, not rpm, because no public data measures batted-ball sidespin. Real balls with the same exit velocity and launch angle land 20 to 50 ft apart with spin, weather and park; this shows the typical one.
On screen. The white arrow is where the barrel is moving (horizontal attack angle), the green arrow is where it faces (horizontal bat angle), and the blue line is where the ball starts. The bat path drawn is a reconstruction from the measured angles, not motion capture.