![]() ![]() Now, how do we get there? Gerrit Cole’s Adjustmentįirst, data was scraped from Baseball Savant on every pitch Gerrit Cole has thrown in the 20 season. It is an entire framework for understanding the game we all love that changes the nature of the competition itself. Harnessing spin rate is not just another tool to which the rest of the league will soon respond. One where hitters take batting practice off of virtual reality AI replications of pitchers with realistic spin patterns and pitch physics so their first time facing the pitcher feels like the third time through the order. I see a baseball future in which pitchers intentionally vary their fastball spin rate to high and low extremes to get maximum separation on their four-seam lift and sinker drop. More than anything, this research question makes me excited about the future of baseball. If this research is confirmed, teams could unlock the true spin potential of their own players, consequently spiking the talent level of the entire field (which fans of the game like myself love to see). As this summer’s historically slow free-agent market has demonstrated, teams are starting to turn inward to their player development systems for a cheap, alternate talent pool. Observers could test the sustainability of a pitcher’s success just by looking at changes in their release point. If this link between release point and spin truly exists and is widely generalizable, breakout pitchers could be identified long before their true talent level is shown in their ERA and WHIP. As noted in last week’s piece, Trevor Bauer has spent five years of his life trying to naturally boost his spin rate and I’m guessing he’s not the only pitcher going down that rabbit hole. The significance of this research should not come as a surprise to anyone who has been paying attention to baseball since the public dissemination of Trackman data. Up to this point, baseball Research and Development departments and private labs like Driveline have learned an incredible amount about the effects of spin on a baseball however, how to increase one’s own spin rate remains to be understood. ![]() I think it’s important to explain to readers why I decided to revisit the question of release point and spin. But as my dad (who happens to be a mathematician himself) has said, “sometimes asking the right questions is more important than finding the answer yourself (Forman, 2018)”. I’m in way over my head on this stuff and you should consider most of it wild speculation in the hopes of provoking the interest of people who can write “biomechanics” without a spell-checker. Before I get into the results, I’ll warn you that the second part of this article where I talk about which mechanical changes correspond to the trends we see in the data is almost entirely guesswork. Why I Care About Spin (and You Should, Too)Īfter last week’s deep dive on Gerrit Cole’s release point change and resulting spin increase, I decided it was time to brush off the old physics textbooks and try to identify a causal link between the two. ![]()
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