MMV #070: Spin Efficiency Explained

TMVP #008: How to Overcome the Yips

In this episode, Josh and I cover:

• Josh's story with the yips
• Step by step progression
• Mental strategies
• Resources to help with the process

You can listen on: 

Spotify

Apple 

YouTube

Todays newsletter is sponsored by:

Grady's Pitching School provides high-quality and durable pitching training and development tools. 

You can order your plyo weighted ball training set here, or if you prefer plyos with seams, sets are available here.  

Coaches, teams, and facilities can now order directly at a discounted price. 

Open the order form here to order plyos, resistance bands, 9-hole pitching targets, and genuine leather practice baseballs.

If you would like to watch the video version of this newsletter, click here.

One of the most important factors in a pitch's movement is the spin efficiency.

What is spin efficiency?

It measures how much of the spin on a ball is contributing to movement.

The formula is simply active spin divided by total spin (active spin/total spin).

The spin rate number you are probably used to seeing is the total spin.

While it can be useful, it doesn't tell us much about how it is impacting the pitch's movement.

Spin efficiency helps.

To make it clear what this is, I think it will be helpful to show some visuals.

 All visuals are from BaseballCloud BallR

The arrow running through the ball is showing us the axis that the ball is spinning on.

The more the arrow starts to turn towards us, the less efficient the spin is.

If the arrow is running through the direction of 1st and 3rd, it has 100% efficiency.

If the arrow is facing straight at us, it has 0% efficiency.

Something important to note is that the seam orientation and spin direction do NOT matter for efficiency.

To make this clear, here is a visual of 100% to 0% efficiency with a 2 seam orientation from a 1:30 axis.

You are now probably asking yourself, "what do I want my efficiency to be for my pitches"?

The truth is, it isn't as simple as listing exact percentages.

This varies greatly from pitcher to pitcher and pitch type to pitch type.

I will attempt to give you general guidelines though.

4 seam fastball - higher the better for more true spin (90%+)

Sinker - between 75-95% (1 seam on the higher end/2 seam on the lower end)

Curveball - 70%+

Cutter - 45-55%

Gyro Slider - <40%

Sweeper - 40-60%

Changeup/Splitter - 60-95% (Lower end for seam shift/higher end for heavy pronation)

Once again, there is a lot of variance to these, but hopefully this gives you a better idea.

In this post I did not talk about seam orientation or spin direction, but both of these play a massive role in pitch movement as well.

I hope this helped and as always reach out with any questions.

See you next week!

Summer Training Program

I am running a 10-week summer training program for high school and college pitchers.

This will take place in Scottsdale, AZ from May 27th - August 3rd.

Get early bird pricing of $1,200 up until May 1st ($2,000 after that).

Click here to learn more.