Looking At Vertical and Horizontal Break In Pitches

Alright today I am going to be looking at different movements in terms of pitches. Specifically I want to examine the movement on sliders, cutters, curves, changes, and fastballs. Within these pitches I believe that the game has trended to the point that we want to be missing barrels. So I want to compare the movements of these pitches to whiff rates. I want to try to use the data that is going to be presented here and make some kind of conclusion. Yes there is more that is going to have to be examined but I don’t want this to stop us.

Fastball

Alright in terms of H movement on Fastballs (4SFB) we can actually get a decent look at different swing and miss rates. What we can see from the trend line here is that it is pretty small in terms of the actual trends that we see. But the data does point that less horizontal run on the fastball than you might consider. It doesn’t mean that having a ton of run on it will be a detriment but I think if we are looking to optimize our movements for swings and misses you might consider a small run.

Vertical Movement on the Fastball is pretty consistent. Whiff rates do not seem to change depending on movement. Most pitches seem to stay at a consistent 10 inches of “Vertical” movement. I would say that there isn’t much to take away from this. Obviously this is a smaller data sample so I think we need to go with the understanding that most of the information we may take away from this will just lead us to think about what can we do further to adjust our teaching.

Curveballs

Alright moving on to Curveballs we see that their is a slight bump in either having more horizontal movement to our pitches, or having less. We want to be missing hitters baseball bats, so adjusting pitches to stay out of the normal range is going to be increasingly important for us to examine. So 12–6 curves should be something we need to examine to be more effective, or more slurve movements to our pitches might be more effective when looking at our practice.

Vertical Movement on our Curveball does present some interesting data. Where the majority of pitches are in the normal range, it does seem as though that having a curveball that breaks deeper does present some additional value to our pitches in terms of swinging and missing.

When we begin to examine curveballs we do see slight increases when examining pitches that break more vertically, and either have a 12–6 movement on them, or are more slurvey in terms of their movement.

Changeup

What does the data look like?

When we start to examine the Changeup horizontal movement information from 2018, we do see that there does not seem to be any information which can begin to make us aware of what we can do to help pitchers make adjustments to their arsenal. The biggest takeaway in terms of Horizontal Movement on Changeups comes from having 8 inches of run with it. There is a spike of swings and misses when you can make your changeup move that much. On the negative side of that though, there does seem to be a penalty for also throwing that baseball with 8 inches of run, as there are large differences when we begin to examine the data which is being presented here.

Changeups that have the ability to move downward do present some trends that we can examine. One thing is that it does seem as though that we want to having our changeups move horizontally more than dive down into the ground. The changeups that are being thrown have similar vertical break to those of the fastballs that we have examined before. It is important to realize this as a point that we need to examine further. We want the fastballs to be moving on a direct like similar to our fastballs, and at a later point to break off of that plane. So it does seem as though the changeup can move on two planes on the way to the plate, but we do need to realize that it has much more horizontal run, than it does vertical break.

Lastly on changeups it does seem as though there is an added benefit to having the baseball move vertically downward, from the fastball. One thing to examine further is going to be the differences in fastball vertical break, and changeup vertical break. Wondering if this may lead us to more interesting data.

Sliders

When we examine slider breaks we do see that there does not seem to be much in terms of a different in whiff rate when it comes to horizontal run on them. There is a small jump if you can get 8+ inches of break on them but it does not seem as though it is a must have to get swings and misses.

One of the most telling charts from this whole exercise is the fact that we do want vertical break on our sliders, but as you can see from the changeups that we examined before, and the fastballs before that, it is not as “big” of a break as you may consider. It is still a positive vertical break which is more on plane with other pitches which could help to explain some pitchers tunnels. There is a benefit to being closer to the 0 inches of vertical break which does produce at least the trends show tend to produce more swings and misses than sliders that may not break as much.

Conclusion

Obviously there is a lot more that goes into creating pitches, and looking at both velocity, and break along differences in terms of playing these pitches off of one another. It is important for us to continue to look at some of the questions which I talked about during this article as it will help us to further understand what breaks do for our pitches. It is important for us to continue to examine what these breaks can do to help our pitchers as the technology continues to grow. We need to provide context to other pitchers, and coaches about the data which is open to everyone, and what players can do on their own to potentially gain an edge.