"Yes, I did think Aldrich was good UNTIL I SAW HIM PLAY. "- thethe
Are you trying to suggest that hitting the ball harder doesn't lead to a higher BABIP, and thus higher offensive production?
Offensive performance is driven by walk rate, contact rate, hard contact (exit velocity), launch angle, and luck. Hitting the ball harder undoubtedly leads to more expected offensive output.
"Yes, I did think Aldrich was good UNTIL I SAW HIM PLAY. "- thethe
No, I'm saying hitting the ball harder by itself doesn't necessarily mean anything, offensive production is due to a multitude of factors (of which you mentioned a few of the others in your post). Nick hitting the ball harder in 2016 than he did in 2015 certainly didn't raise his offensive production or his BABIP, and I've never seen any data to show a definite correlation between the two in a direct fashion. GF just posted two solid articles that suggest there is no correlation between hitting the ball harder and performance. If hitting the ball harder is the result of adding negative traits elsewhere then it could actually have a negative impact on offensive performance.
I'm certainly not saying making hard contact is a bad thing, but exit velocity by itself means very little to me as a stand alone. I was actually asking thethe that question because I was curious if he had any data to back up his statement or was just pulling statements out of his butt as he is wont to do at times, because I haven't seen any showing a direct correlation between exit velocity and performance (not that I've looked at it super hard).
Hitting the ball harder is probably correlated with strikeout rate.