Pitch Design Strategies 101
Introduction
For those familiar with the integration of technology in today's game, you have probably heard of the term "pitch design" before. Pitch design has become somewhat of a blanket term used to describe the pitch development processes that range from tweaking an existing pitch in an effort to increase its effectiveness to the introduction of an entirely new pitch to a pitcher's arsenal.
There has been some controversy on the semantics of the term that has centered around the idea of whether a completely "new pitch" can actually be created. This is not the idea that the term is supposed to evoke. To some degree, any type of manipulation that a pitcher imparts on a pitch creates a movement profile that has likely been thrown by someone, somewhere, at some point in time at least once, if not millions of times, before. But to "design" a pitch in the sense that most of us use "pitch design," it is simply the process of attempting to make a pitch better by analyzing a set of data tagged to each throw and then changing certain aspects about the pitch that we think improves the offering based off of said data. Maybe a player wants to increase the amount of movement on their curveball or maybe they want to learn how to add a changeup to their repertoire. These examples both fall under the "pitch design" umbrella and we often use a variety of metrics to accomplish these goals.
Pitch design in this sense is a process that also requires the use of several different tools. First, you need some sort of pitch-tracking unit. The most popular unit due to its price and ease of use is Rapsodo (although other radar and/or optical-based devices such as TrackMan, Yakkertech, Flightscope, etc. can be used, too). The second essential tool is slo-motion video. This is to get a good look at the pitcher's release of a pitch, usually from behind the mound. Popular devices for slo-motion video are Edgertronic cameras, some Sony cameras, and iPhone's slo-mo video feature. You will also need a smart tablet and tripod to create the most basic setup for pitch design work.
As a disclaimer, none of these tools are cheap except for the $29.99 Amazon tripod I currently own. A Rapsodo unit will cost you upwards of $4,500 when all said and done and this is arguably the best bang for your buck in terms of pitch tracking technology. Edgertronic cameras, which are used by many MLB teams and can record up to 17,000 frames per second, will cost you roughly $8,000.
So without further ado, I am creating this blog post not to give examples of how to use the pitch design process on a budget (because it's almost impossible
The Tools
Here is what we use: Rapsodo 2.0 pitching unit, an iPad (for the Rapsodo), a tripod, an iPhone (for slo-mo video), a mound, and a baseball. If you have an Android,
Before I share examples of how I have used pitch design with our players at Scotland, let's take a brief dive into the metrics involved with pitch tracking technology:
The Numbers
Pitch design can be a complicated process. There are many numbers involved that can overwhelm people that are new to pitch tracking tech. For example, here is a screenshot of the data that a Rapsodo unit will provide for each pitch thrown:
Here is a brief summary:
At the top of the page, you will see metrics labeled speed, spin, direction, true spin, efficiency, and pitch.
Speed: self-explanatory. The speed of the pitch. Off to an easy start.
Spin: how much the ball spins measured in RPM (revolutions per minute). Still pretty easy.
Direction: let's cover that in a second with some helpful visuals...
True Spin: related to "Spin," this is how much of the pitch's total spin actually contributes to the movement of the pitch. So, of the 2187 total RPM, only 2103 RPM makes the ball move right, left, down, or able to fight gravity (up).
Efficiency: this is "True Spin" in percentage form. A higher percentage means more True Spin, while a lower number means less True Spin and more gyroscopic spin (with gyro, think of the spin of a bullet or a football). This pitch has 96% true spin and 4% gyro or bullet spin, which is pretty typical for the fastball pitch type.
Pitch: pitch type. In this instance, a fastball is thrown.
Below those metrics, you'll see the silhouette of a pitcher and another set of numbers. These are release metrics and are somewhat self-explanatory based on their labels. However, in this post, we don't need to go in-depth on the meanings of these metrics.
To the right of the release metrics is a chart to help visualize total movement of the pitch. This is not a strike zone representation, but a raw movement representation. On this pitch, "12.7H" means the pitch broke horizontally to the right by 12.7 inches. It has roughly a foot of arm side run. The "15.8V" means the pitch vertically resisted the natural pull of gravity by roughly 16 inches. It has 15.8 inches of carry or "hop."
The bottom of the screen shows where the pitch was thrown in relation to the strike zone, as well as a visual from the catcher's perspective in the bottom right.
Now, back to Direction, because it's very important:
Imagine the face of a clock.
In accordance with the Rapsodo example given, this visual above from Driveline's EDGE tool represents a fastball with a spin direction of 1:16. The blue ring around the ball is the direction the ball spins, which would cut through a "time" of 1:16 if the ball was a clock and the blue ring was the hour hand.
In order to visualize this concept for all pitch types, here are some helpful screenshots from Jake Stone's Youtube channel Simple Sabermetrics, which is a great resource for learning all things data in the game of baseball. I highly recommend Jake's work as it is very easily digestible and his lessons are impressively simple for things that tend to get a bit complicated.
This is where pitch design and understanding pitch tracking data can get tricky. In essence, when analyzing pitch data, we also have to account for velocity of the pitch, spin efficiency/true spin, etc. All of these things work in synergy to create the movement profile for each pitch thrown. Changing one metric will likely change one or more other metrics and, in turn, can change the pitch's movement profile significantly or change it's pitch type classification altogether.
However, the subtleties and fine details of understanding pitch data are not super important within this post, so let's look at some real examples of manipulating pitches in order to make them more effective!
Examples of How to Effectively Use Pitch Design Processes
Throughout the rest of this post, I will share some take-home videos that I made for a few of our pitchers at Scotland Campus as take-home lessons after their pitch design bullpens. The point of each video is to help the athlete understand what they are trying to accomplish with their pitches, what is going wrong in their pitch development, what is going right, or simply what is happening at face value. While these are very simple lessons and goals, each video serves a different purpose, includes a different goal, and has a different lesson to be taught. The examples included are things that are worked on in the very beginning stages of pitch design, and might be considered "easy fixes" to issues within a pitcher's arsenal. The athletes we work with at Scotland are either high school or postgraduate pitchers, so the lessons here are typically not as complicated or info-dense as things you might see during MLB spring training. However, I have found that the athletes find value in being able to put simple visuals alongside their goals in pitch development, and these are examples that can definitely apply to many other players at lower levels of baseball.
Example 1: Shaping a Curveball, Phase 1
Something I learned this year is that many pitchers actually don't have a very good grasp on what type of spin creates a curveball, slider, or changeup. Younger players tend to rely on feel and real-time feedback when throwing offspeed pitches and don't really know what makes a curveball a curveball, which means younger players that have a good offspeed pitch often just happen to come by it naturally because they have always had "feel" for it. In instances where this isn't the case and it comes time for a player to need to develop a breaking ball, knowing what spin direction is and what spin direction to aim for is important. It is important for them to know what spin directions create topspin, and that topspin creates downward movement, which is a necessity for a breaking ball.
In this scenario, the athlete had struggled to command his curveball since he stepped foot on campus. Through help with Rapsodo, we were able to identify that the spin direction on his curveball was erratic from pitch to pitch. In referencing the screenshot of Jake Stone's video on curveball movement profiles, it is known that curveballs typically have spin directions ranging from 6:00-8:00ish, with 6:00 being a total 12-6 CB type with very vertical downward movement, and 7:30 representing a traditional, more sideways curveball. However, this athlete was often throwing "curveballs" with a 10:30-11:30 spin direction, meaning he was actually putting backspin on the pitch. This is something that we don't want in a curveball because it doesn't allow the pitch to have any depth or downward movement. That pitch type will actually fight gravity and "carry" a certain amount instead of break downward.
In order to fix the issue, we first identified what spin direction we needed to achieve in order to create downward movement on the pitch. Because the spin direction he was currently throwing the pitch at was so far from what we were looking for, we picked the most basic spin direction of 7:30 for our starting point. While this direction represents the most basic curveball profile, it also allows the largest margin for error in breaking balls as it is exactly in the middle of what designates "topspin" on a pitch for right-handed pitchers. Seeing as the first step towards our goal was simply to generate topspin, this made sense.
Here is what he was able to achieve on day one after identifying his spin direction goal:
(side note: this was the first video I ever made on iMovie, so the editing skills here
On the "bad" curveball, we see that the 11:24 spin direction combined with a large amount of gyro/bullet spin (which allows gravity to have a larger effect) made this pitch float and fall towards the plate. However, we see that with the 7:30 direction, the pitch breaks sharply downward as it gets toward the plate. There are various other factors at play here, but placing a large amount of focus simply on spin direction helped this athlete achieve the movement he wanted on the pitch.
As an added effect, at the 1:15 mark of the video, we are able to see what type of release creates a bad CB and what creates a good CB as both release points are seen side by side. The bad CB shows the hand and fingers mostly behind the ball, which tends to create backspin, while the good CB shows the fingers more towards the side-to-front of the ball, allowing the proper spin direction to take hold.Finally, The Driveline EDGE 3D visual at the end of the video allows us to see the drastically different movement profiles between the two pitches.
This really helped the athlete understand what type of spin needs to be imparted and what it takes to create that spin. From that point, we moved on to try to replicate the pitch as often as possible to see if it could become an effective offering against hitters. Mostly, this type of video helps serve as a light bulb moment on what breaking balls are actually comprised of.
Example 2: Shaping a Curveball, Phase 2
More of the same here, as we are focusing on CB spin direction. Here, a different athlete was struggling to command his CB. It would be thrown for a strike about 3 out of every 10 pitches, with many of the pitches popping out of the hand early and being left high and out of the zone or lacking effective movement. This lack of consistency, paired with a low spin rate for a CB, and low spin efficiency (lots of bullet spin) led us to believe that tilting the spin direction from 8:00ish to more of a 6:30-7:00 direction might help increase both spin efficiency and spin rate (due to the tendency to gain more top-to-bottom leverage with the grip at release), increase overall movement as a result, and possibly increase the ability to command the pitch.
The "Just OK" CB wasn't a bad pitch, but again, lacked consistency overall. The "Good CB" was able to be replicated more often, increased true spin by 20%, and resulted in an increase of 7 inches of depth (or VBreak). Again, we are able to see the difference in release at the 1:07 mark of the video, where the Good CB has the fingers more along the side-to-front of the ball as opposed to being behind-to-side of the ball on the Just OK CB.
This visual really helped the athlete conceptualize what was trying to be accomplished in terms of pitch shape, as well as the ability to replicate the pitch after seeing what was happening with his finger, hand, and wrist position at release.
Example 3: Refining a Curveball
In the third example of a CB, we see a more specific goal at hand. Here, a somewhat decent CB already exists, but the athlete was not comfortable with the grip, the amount of movement, or its effectiveness against hitters. After verbally communicating these things to me, we decided to tweak the grip slightly to allow him to find more leverage on the pitch. Basically, we tried adjusting the grip by changing seam orientation along his middle finger by about a half inch in an effort to be able to "pull down harder" on the pitch at release.
Luckily, the result was something that the athlete liked. The pitch with the adjusted grip resulted in roughly 6 more inches of total movement due to a change in spin direction from 7:30 to 7:10 (20 "minutes" more vertical tilt) and a 20% increase in spin efficiency. We were able to go back and look at the different release points (at the 0:40 mark) and see that, again, the wrist and finger positioning was notably different.
Example 4: Identifying a Breaking Ball
This example includes two videos to show how the process might progress from week to week. Here's a lefty that was trying to identify what exactly he wanted out of a breaking ball. His CB was sometimes a slider and when trying to replicate it, became a CB again... or he had trouble commanding it, usually missing high and to his arm side.
Here, we see two slider-type breaking balls with low spin efficiency. By itself, this isn't necessarily a bad thing. Many good pitches have this type of profile. The issue here was that the spin direction was volatile, and so was his ability to replicate the pitch, especially for a strike. By the end of the video, we tried identifying what could be causing this inconsistency. We thought it might have been an issue of his hand being behind the ball at release. In the previous examples, this same problem largely caused backspin for each athlete. However, this pitcher's arm slot and arm action led us to hypothesize that this hand position at release was causing too much gyroscopic spin and a tendency for the ball to slip out too early. It certainly wasn't allowing us to create any type of downward movement, which is what we were shooting for to some degree. At the end of the video, using Driveline's EDGE tool again, I tried to communicate that getting "on top more" might help the movement profile.
The second video in this example is from the following week, where simply "releasing the ball higher" was our cue to get on top of the ball more.
The result was a significant vertical direction change from 3:30 to 4:00 as well as a 35% increase in true spin for added downward break. Something different about this example was the mechanical difference that seemed to occur when cueing a higher release. It appeared to me that the overall effort level increased. While I believe "extension" is more of a result of movement rather than something that should be cued, I did point out to the athlete that, basically, he finished the pitch on his better CB. This can be seen from 0:35-0:53 of the video in which some factors at release are different, as well as markings in his own shirt that show some possible mechanical adjustments.
Example 5: Replicating the Pitch
This video is less of a lesson but rather positive reinforcement. This athlete, from Example 1, was working on hammering away at his new offspeed pitch after finding the grip and direction needed to achieve a true curveball. During this pitch design session, the only focus was to be able to repeat the pitch we wanted over and over again.
We were able to repeat several good offerings in a row on this specific day, and as an attempt to boost confidence in the new pitch, I was able to send him this video of the pitch being repeated multiple times. This might help with pre-pitch or pregame mental visuals for guys that struggle to imagine what the pitch's purpose should be or what the movement should look like when the pitch is effective, especially when the pitch is new to them.
Example 6: Reference Point
If nothing else, show your pitchers what the identity of each pitch is. In this example, the athlete is working on CB and SL sequencing. We are making sure that the pitches don't morph into the same pitch and become one mediocre offering. Instead, we want to shoot for an 8:00-9:00 SL for more sideways break and a 7:00ish CB for more vertical break.
The goal of this video is actually to be redundant. We want to reiterate that these pitches are different and have different uses. This video aims to serve as a baseline for the current pitch repertoire.
Conclusion
As a first year coach, these videos are something that I've found to be helpful for our pitchers. Feedback has ranged from lightbulb moments to the creation of confidence and, honestly, even a few duds.
The pitch design process involves a lot of trial and error and sometimes more frustration than actual success, but the pros still outweigh the cons.
The most important part of this process is that a goal is prescribed before each session. What are we trying to accomplish? We aren't here to just throw off a mound. Usually, easy gains can be made by just shooting for a certain spin direction, throwing the pitch to a certain location, or trying out basic grips and adjusting from there. There will also be times where the player is not interested at all in data, so it is then up to the coach to nudge the player in the right direction based off of what type of interaction gets through to each athlete. Sometimes, players like this can act as an unintentionally helpful refresher that focusing too much on data and numbers can be a detriment. I try to limit the amount of metrics to focus on for each pitcher to one every time we throw with Rapsodo . Any more than that during a bullpen, especially with younger and more inexperienced athletes, can become paralysis by analysis.
Another note is that you should never try to "design" anything that isn't needed. While much of this process is left up to the discretion of the athlete, it is worth mentioning that trying to add a pitch that doesn't fit a player's arsenal in the first place or is clearly not sticking after a reasonable amount of reps is a waste of time. The easiest fixes sometimes are the most simple, and "working on a slider" just because the athlete saw Max Scherzer's on TV is not always the best course of action when there is lower hanging fruit to be plucked.
To end an already too long post, I will close by saying that these take-home lesson videos serve a few purposes. 1) Helps bridge the gap between data and "feel." 2) Aids in summarizing each day's bullpens as a note-taking exercise between both the athlete and myself. 3) Tracks progress.
...And hopefully, they can serve another purpose in providing other coaches and athletes with some ideas on how to start integrating pitch design into their programming!
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