Optimizing Breaking Ball Shape Through Data-Driven Pitch Design, Part One

Note: The following is a preview of an article published at Driveline Baseball. Follow the link at the bottom of this page to read the full article.

With technologies like Rapsodo, TrackMan, and Yakkertech reaching the mainstream in recent years, designing a specific breaking ball for an athlete has never been more straightforward to accomplish.

Big leaguers are using advances in Pitch Design to their advantage to increase velocity and add additional sweep and depth to their breaking balls, helping them achieve a record number of strikeouts in the process.

Of course, we know that we’ve always been striving for more sweep, more depth, and more velocity with breaking balls, and, as a function of that, the league’s average slider has only gotten nastier over time. But, let’s consider a more likely scenario: what if adding sweep to a breaking ball comes with a loss of velocity, or adding velocity comes with a loss of depth and spin efficiency?

How do we optimize the three components of improving a breaking ball while being cognizant of the nuanced tradeoff between them all?

In this blog, we’ll try to tackle some of those hard hitting questions by providing context using MLB data and Driveline’s internal models — models we use with our own high-level athletes in Pitch Design sessions. This will be part one of a two-part breaking ball pitch design blog series.

The full article was originally published at Driveline Baseball on September 17, 2021 and can be viewed here.