January 17, 2017

Spinning Batted Balls

It turns out there is more to batted ball spin than is being captured by StatCast. There is backspin and sidespin, but the system only captures spin.

Now let’s combine the misalignment spin and the lateral spin for a right-handed batter pulling a ball down the left field line with the barrel of the bat below the hands when it hits the ball. The misalignment spin will cause the ball to move away from the foul line (slice toward the batter’s right) while the lateral spin will cause the ball to move toward the foul line (hook). That is, they tend to cancel each other.

Contrast this with the right-hand batter hitting one down the right field line with the barrel below the hands. The misalignment spin will cause the ball to move toward the foul line (slice toward the batter’s right) and the lateral spin will do the same thing. This explains the knowledge of corner outfielders that pulled balls are more likely to stay fair than balls hit the opposite way.

What is the point of all this? Let’s put it this way: the very high correlation between gender and pregnancy indicates that there might more than just statistics involved. The statistics of the barreled ball illustrate the same phenomena.

The entire article is well worth your read.

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