Spin rates and Spider Tack

[batmagadanleadoff]

Visual Forensics

How baseball's war on sticky stuff is already changing the game

After MLB got serious about foreign substances, spin rates fell, pitchers changed and hitting improved, a Washington Post analysis shows.



Good long read; lotsa graphics, charts and pics



Excerpt:

Washington Nationals ace Max Scherzer, hat on the ground, unbuckled his belt as umpires stood around him. Oakland Athletics reliever Sergio Romo walked off the mound and pulled down his pants. New York Mets star Jacob deGrom laughed as he held out his hat for on-field examination. [***] Before the spectacle of on-field enforcement even began, word of its arrival trickled out around June 3, as MLB made it known it planned to increase scrutiny amid record-high strikeout rates. It appears to be working. Spin rates — or the number of revolutions per minute a baseball makes on its way to home plate — have decreased across the sport, according to a Washington Post analysis. Pitchers have said in recent weeks that it's difficult to grip the ball, and the Post analysis shows that, too: Some pitchers appeared to be searching for grip — using rosin, trying to find sweat and licking fingers — behavior that suggests they are trying to adjust to this new reality. Spin rate can be key to a pitcher's success: A pitch thrown with the same velocity will move differently depending on how fast it spins, and a pitch with a higher spin rate often moves more sharply than one thrown with the same velocity but less spin. The Post analyzed the spin rate, controlling for velocity, for nearly 2 million pitches, focusing primarily on fastballs, of more than 1,400 players from about 9,000 games from 2017 to 2021 — including almost 70,000 pitches since June 3. After climbing year over year, spin rates fell in the three weeks after June 3 to levels lower than in 2017, when the data first started being tracked reliably, according to a Post analysis of data published by Baseball Prospectus.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2021/07/02/sticky-stuff-baseball-data/https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2021/07/02/sticky-stuff-baseball-data/

[Edgy MD]

Sergio Romo is still pitching? How much beard is he flying?

[smg58]

"The results of the crackdown are also being seen at the plate. Fewer at-bats after two strikes are ending in walks or strikes after June 3, a review of recent data shows, and more than 44 percent of them are ending with contact — up from 40 percent earlier in the season."



And what else? Nothing about overall hitting numbers and run production? How much of the drop in offense this year relative to the last couple of years appears to have been restored by cracking down on pitchers using illegal substances? If you can get details on a statistic as specific as this, you can say something about the big picture, right? The absence of this information is, at best, shoddy reporting.

[batmagadanleadoff]

Baseball began cracking down on Spider Tack, etc. about a month and a half ago. As per the Athletic's reporting, these Mets pitchers have had virtually unchanged spin rates since the crackdown began:



Jacob deGrom

David Peterson

Trevor May

Jeurys Familia



These Mets pitchers have shown the largest drops in their spin rates since the crackdown:



Drew Smith

Edwin Diaz

Marcus Stroman

Taijuan Walker



https://theathletic.com/2714821/2021/07/19/this-week-in-mets-how-do-jacob-degrom-francisco-lindor-injuries-influence-new-yorks-trade-deadline-approach/https://theathletic.com/2714821/2021/07/19/this-week-in-mets-how-do-jacob-degrom-francisco-lindor-injuries-influence-new-yorks-trade-deadline-approach/

Edited July 19, 2021 by Guest

[Edgy MD]

That's also a pretty good list of who has and hasn't generally changed their levels of performance on the staff.



NSJS.

[Ceetar]

Diaz


[attachment=1]chart.jpeg[/attachment]

Stroman


[attachment=2]chart (1).jpeg[/attachment]

Walker


[attachment=0]chart (2).jpeg[/attachment]

[Ceetar]

Control group:



Bauer


[attachment=0]chart (3).jpeg[/attachment]

[seawolf17]

That Diaz drop is... significant. Yikes.

[Edgy MD]

Very interesting how a change in the rate of one pitch on a certain date usually is reflected in rate change in the same direction with other pitches, to differing degrees.



I could come up with three or four different theses based on that, but I'm not sure which one I would want to explore first.

[Benjamin Grimm]

I'm wondering what the weather was like during the June 20 game.

[ashie62]

Very interesting. I would wonder if Taijuan Walker's current struggles are from a possible lack of tack.

[Edgy MD]

Benjamin Grimm wrote: I'm wondering what the weather was like during the June 20 game.

Conditions is certainly one of those theses.

[MFS62]

=batmagadanleadoff post_id=71824 time=1626723111 user_id=68]
These Mets pitchers have shown the largest drops in their spin rates since the crackdown:



Drew Smith

Edwin Diaz

Marcus Stroman

Taijuan Walker

[Ceetar]

Be interesting to see what Stroman's spin rate is today. Later

https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/gamefeed?date=7/21/2021&gamePk=633196&chartType=pitch&legendType=pitchName&playerType=pitcher&inning=&count=&pitchHand=&batSide=&descFilter=&ptFilter=&resultFilter=&hf=pitchVelocity#633196https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/gamefeed?date=7/21/2021&gamePk=633196&chartType=pitch&legendType=pitchName&playerType=pitcher&inning=&count=&pitchHand=&batSide=&descFilter=&ptFilter=&resultFilter=&hf=pitchVelocity#633196