60 Yard Dash Times: Benchmarks by Age and Level

Here is the number almost nobody leads with: 6.9 to 7.0 seconds is major league average. Not high school average. Major league.

So if you are a 15-year-old who ran 7.1 at a showcase last weekend and drove home disappointed, you ran a big-league-average 60. Most published 60 yard dash times charts will tell you that is mediocre. Most published charts are wrong.

The scouting scale is the benchmark that counts

Scouts do not grade speed against age groups. They grade it on the 20-80 scale, where 50 is major league average and every 10 points is one standard deviation. The industry conversion table maps 60 times straight to run grades.

Perfect Game staff have made the same point in plainer language: 7.00 is major league average, and very few 14-year-olds beat it. At the Perfect Game Select Festival, which gathers the best 14-year-olds in the country, most run 7.0 to 7.5.

60 yard dash times by age, honestly

Age benchmarks are what everyone searches for, and most of the age charts online are invented. One widely shared chart lists 5.0 seconds as “exceptional” for a 12-year-old. For scale, the fastest 60s ever run at Perfect Game showcases sit around 6.2, by the best high school players in the country.

Here is what actually has something behind it.

Two caveats matter more than the table. Showcase data comes from families who pay to attend national events, so it skews fast. And improvement runs about 0.2 seconds per year through the teens, with no plateau by 18.

Who holds the watch matters more than your training

This is the part nobody writes down.

One parent reported his son’s single 60 being clocked between 6.45 and 6.69 by different people standing at the same finish line. That is a 0.24-second spread on one run. Another watched his son hand-timed at 6.7 all season, then run 7.0 the first time a clock did it electronically.

Perfect Game staff rank the three common methods by how fast they read, and the order surprises people: a parent’s stopwatch reads fastest, a laser sits in the middle, and a scout’s stopwatch reads slowest. A parent wants the best possible number. A scout wants one he can defend.

Surface adds another 0.1 to 0.2 seconds between grass and turf. So does the start: baseball runs the 60 from a stealing stance facing the pitcher, and that crossover first step costs time a sprinter never pays.

So a 6.7 on grass with a parent timing is not the 6.7 a college coach has in his notes. Assume a quarter second of daylight and you will be close.

Want a number you can trust without timing gates? Measure 180 feet, film from the side at 60 frames per second, and count frames from first movement to the finish. Each frame is 0.017 seconds. Tedious, and far more honest than a thumb on a stopwatch.

Softball measures speed with a different test

Softball players searching 60 yard dash times are usually chasing the wrong number. College softball recruiting runs on home-to-first. Published Division I targets sit near 2.8 seconds for middle infielders and center fielders, 2.9 for catchers and third basemen, and 3.0 for first basemen, each division step down adding roughly a tenth, out to about 3.2 at junior college.

The reason is the field. Softball basepaths are 60 feet, so nearly every competitive sprint ends before a runner hits top speed. If your showcase runs a 60 anyway, treat it as a rough comparison between athletes, not a recruiting number.

The major leaguers who ran slow 60s

The best argument against reading too much into one number sits in Perfect Game’s own archive. A scouting piece on slow runners went back through the high school times of major leaguers who “didn’t run well enough.”

• Dustin Pedroia ran 7.11 as a rising senior. He won an MVP and a Gold Glove and went 20-for-21 stealing bases.
• Troy Tulowitzki ran 7.25. Scouts called him a future third baseman. He stayed at shortstop.
• Ian Kinsler ran 7.11 and lasted until the 17th round. He later joined the 20/20 club.
• Carl Crawford was hand-timed at 6.8, roughly average, then led the American League in steals four times in six full seasons.
• J.J. Hardy ran 7.17. Prince Fielder ran the exact same time on the same field a year later.

The author, a scout himself, wrote something you rarely hear from the organization that made this test famous. He had questioned “the relevance of knowing how fast a player runs 60 yards in a straight line when he never has to do so in a game.” His message to players: a 60 yard dash time is not a death sentence.

Where the time is actually hiding

Perfect Game staff put the available gain from start technique alone at about 0.2 seconds, for nearly anyone, without getting one bit physically faster.

The setup they describe: picture a line running from your left heel to the finish. Your right toe should just touch it. Slightly open, so your crossover step drives straight at the target instead of sideways. Closed feet force a correction step. Wide-open feet cost nearly as much.

Beyond the start, coaches converge on three things.

• Put about 70% of your weight on the front leg so your first movement goes forward instead of rocking back
• Train 10-yard sprints instead of 60s, and time them. You can do many quality reps at 10 yards. You cannot at 60
• Run 65 yards, not 60. Decelerating at the line is free time given away

One veteran coach dissents, and he is worth hearing: speed is mostly given rather than built, so the 60 deserves the least of your prep time. Run it a few times so you know how, then spend the hours on your arm and your bat. A low-70s arm costs a recruit far more than a 7.1 does.

Is the 60 on its way out?

The strongest case against it is arithmetic. A sprint has an acceleration phase, roughly the first 15 yards, and a top-speed phase. That makes the 60 about 25% acceleration and 75% top speed. Now count a stolen base: take a 90-foot basepath, subtract a lead of 8 to 10 feet and 10 feet of slide, and the real sprint is a little over 20 yards, mostly acceleration. One strength coach breaks the math down and concludes the test and the skill are close to inverted.

The industry has noticed. The MLB Draft Combine measures a 30-yard dash, and USA Baseball events use 30 yards. Coaches, scouts, and trainers are openly debating its usefulness. The 60 survives anyway, because it is the shared language every showcase reports and every coach carries a mental table for.

The short version

Three numbers are worth carrying around. 6.9 to 7.0 is major league average. Under 6.7 turns a college coach’s head. And a quarter second of whatever you ran belongs to whoever held the watch, not to your legs.

Fix your start before the rest. For almost everyone that is 0.2 seconds sitting on the table.