Nathan: Pitch movement, spin efficiency, and all that
From SABR member Alan Nathan at The Hardball Times on August 27, 2018:
In the past few years, the concept of “spin efficiency” seems to have taken hold. I first wrote about this subject in the article “All Spin Is Not Alike,” which appeared at Baseball Prospectus back in 2015. The essence of the article is that there are two types of spin. First is the so-called “transverse spin,” which directly leads to movement; second is “gyrospin,” for which there is no movement.
The Trackman radar system, which is an integral part of the Statcast system installed in every major league park, measures the full trajectory of the pitched ball, from which the movement can be determined and the transverse spin inferred. Moreover, it also measures the total spin rate for the pitch (i.e., the Pythagorean sum of transverse spin and gyrospin). Although the term “spin efficiency” was not used in the article, it is simply the ratio of transverse to total spin.
The concept is simple: For a given total spin rate, a larger spin efficiency means more movement. The primary goal of this article is a critical examination of two different techniques for extracting the movement and transverse spin from the trajectory. One of these techniques is the one actually used by Trackman; the other is an alternate. As we shall see, the latter produces more accurate results than the former.
Read the full article here: https://www.fangraphs.com/tht/pitch-movement-spin-efficiency-and-all-that/
Originally published: August 27, 2018. Last Updated: August 27, 2018.