Considering Spin In Batted Balls
When we look at batted balls almost all of the information that you are presented with is either from the Batted Balls Launch Angle or the Batted Ball Exit Velocity. Both of which gives coaches a better idea of what they should be looking for in hitters. While providing objective feedback to players. I don’t think that using data is going to go anywhere any time soon. But you might often hear people talk about how they don’t want their players to be bogged down with the information, or we might have access to the information because of where we might be coaching. I think the helping players to realize the value in the type of spin that they are getting on their batted balls is a great piece of immediate feedback that players will see. Even if we are using a Launch Monitor the first thing that most players will look at is the flight of the baseball after it is struck.
I will defer to Joey Votto’s old video of him talking about this same topic:
I think Votto provides a good idea as to how players can give themselves good feedback. Will the feedback be perfect, no but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t use this information. How the ball is struck and the spin that the baseball has is something that we should teach players to use.
I think that players are not taught as to HOW to use this piece of information. Players get this feedback on every swing that they take. (Mostly outdoors but you can get a feel for it in a cage) The thing to realize that is a player doesn’t even think of batted ball spin off of the bat then they will not be able to use it as a piece of feedback.
How do we teach a player to use feedback?
I don’t think that we teach players who to use incoming information and use it to process what just happened. I think a lot of times a player will hit the ball and the process for feedback looks something like:
Contact -> Picks up the ball mid flight (Visual)-> Watches the distance that it goes (Visual)-> Ready for next pitch
I think that there are several other pieces of information that players can use to build in a better model. When a player uses this model for feedback they are limiting how they perceived the last batted ball. Having a bigger model for how players acquire their own feedback is important. The feedback model should look something more like this:
Contact-> Hears sound off the ball (Auditor)-> Player checks for feel of the bat (Kinesthetic) -> Picks up ball flight (Visual) -> Watches for trajectory, distance, and flight characteristics, speed the ball is moving-> Open to feedback from other / Reactions of others (Social) -> Ready for next pitch
Now we can focus on any one of these pieces of feedback but I want to focus today on the spin that the ball will acquire after contact. First let us see what these different types of spin will look like.
Side Spin
When players will see side spin it will often be called a tailing or running line drive or it could be described as a slide or draw. Either way the vocabulary is necessarily the important piece here. (Although I do like the golf terms of fade and draw) The important thing is to each players the concept of a “True Back-spun Ball” Vs. Balls that have this Slice or Fade effect to them. What they might look like.
To further give you more of an idea of what is happening here is a video from the golf world showing you what these types of side spun balls might look like.
Fade:
Draw:
Players a lot of times will not have the idea down that these two types of hits are “less than perfect” when it comes to the baseball swing. This is not to say that having the ability to hit with either of these two types of spins is not important. I think that we want to draw a players attention to what is happening to the baseball that they just hit. Yes players can be success without hitting balls that have true backspin. But more often than not these swings are mishit in some way.
How we could go about teaching this?
Begin With The End
Define what the goal should be for batted ball spin. Then decide how you’ll assess it. This might be as simple as stating that backspin is what we should be aiming for, and then explaining that we should use the visual field to track this. Showing videos may have a great benefit for this point. Especially if hitters are not use to using spin as feedback. Showing them explicitly what each of these types of spins looks like may be of value.
Re-enforcing This During Practice
This would be a good first step in this process. We are probably giving players a new tool to work with. So working with them to understand what type of spin they are getting would be the first step. That might mean calling out what is happening and what we want to happen. Explaining explicitly our goal that we are trying to achieve.
Creating Vocabulary Around This Concept
Giving players words to describe what is happening is valuable. Creating a common vocabulary around how you describe something is a step that should be taken here. If everyone knows what it means when you say “That ball was faded.” then the ability to come to a common understanding is expedited.
Give Player At Bats
Giving players many chances to reinforce this new piece of feedback should be our goal. Changes won’t happen over night. So ensuring that we are making this a regular piece of the puzzle is something we might consider doing. This might mean that we are constantly asking players what type of spin that they had on their batted balls. They might often get it wrong or not see it, but that isn’t the point. The idea is to ask and if we are consistent with this they will start to acquire the tool.
