![]() ![]() ![]() I’ve computed the approach angles (just line fitting their X-Y coordinates) and find that the red points are 6.5 degrees while the blue points are 7.5 degrees. My new friend Miller Hogan has explained the benefits of “approach angle” to me. Note that Magnus effect is not effected by seam height. The seam heights are about 35% different, and the break magnitude averages to a 20% difference. Note how the scatter in the blue and green dots is predominantly diagonal. My guess is that a lot of it is due to small miss-alignments of the ball. The scatter in all of these pitches is larger than normal with this cannon. I have yet to figure out why this is happening, however. This bolsters my claim that these effects are independent of Magnus effect. With the loop on the bottom, that’s 4″ of additional horizontal break, but with the loop on the top, that’s 4″ less of horizontal break - despite identical spin axes and spin rates. Note that Magnus force here is in the other plane (and generates positive X break).Īdditionally, and this was not expected, we get nearly 4″ of horizontal break too. Both balls are from 2019 and have lower than “normal” seams.įor the larger seamed ball, we get about 4″ of break away from the loop. Black is a non-seam-shifted 2-seam orientation. Blue and Red are a ball with 35/1000″ seams while Green and Orange are a ball os 26/1000″ seams. Green and Blue have the loop on top, Red and Orange have it on the bottom. Open symbols are individual pitches while closed are averages. If you’d like, think of all horizontal locations as having 15″ added. So, for the plot, the location of the non-seam shifted 2-seam pitch (black) is used as the origin and all other results are shifted accordingly. Most obviously, because something happened.Īll of these pitches have about 15″ of horizontal break due to the Magnus effect, but that is not what I want to look at here. The figure below shows the results, and I think they are really interesting for several reasons. As a result, the lower ball may appear to be moving faster. ![]() As you will see in the results, in addition to moving downward, the ball with the loop on top moved closer to the camera and the other one moved away. The top ball has a “loop” on the bottom while the bottom ball has the loop on the top. The movie below shows the view at home plate from the side for the larger seamed ball in two orientations. One had a seam height (as measured by calipers) of 26/1000″ and the other 35/1000″ so we could determine if seam height matters. A Rapsodo Clip is shown below.īoth balls were 2019 vintage. All of these pitches had 3:00 tilt (a vertical spin axis), a relatively low RPM of 1200 (we did not want a lot of Magnus force but we wanted a stable axis) and 90 mph. They did 3 orientations with 2 different baseballs. View 2Īndrew and his friend Troy, who used to work for me for money but is as happy to work for food, fired 56 pitches. This ball could be moving up, down, left or right, but cannot be moving in or out of the page for this to work. I want to stress that for the purpose of this effect, it does not matter which direction the axis is as long as the ball has this orientation relative to the axis and there is no gyro component. In the animation below, the axis (pole) is sicking straight out of your screen. As a result, it makes a “loop” as it goes around the pole. The base of the the horseshoe on the front side is nearly at the pole (which would be our scuffball pitch), but is a bit past it. I’m going to call it The Looper, because of the seam pattern it makes as it spins. With more than a century of history, it’s hard to name pitches. But, my graduate student, Andrew Smith (who is looking for a job), found one. We have had a hard time demonstrating seam shifted wake pitches like the Laminar Express or the Discoball Changeup because our pitching machine (and, indeed, pretty much every pitching machine not located in Pullman) cannot do gyro.
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