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The fluid dynamics of baseball pitches

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Analytics vs the Old School

Posted on March 13, 2025April 27, 2025 by bartonlsmith

It’s died down a bit, but last season there was a lot of hand-wringing by some baseball folks about “Analytics” gaining too much power in baseball. I want to discuss this topic and hopefully convince you that both “gut feel” and analytics have an important place in the game. In Continue Reading

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Ideas about Youth Baseball

Posted on January 19, 2025January 19, 2025 by bartonlsmith

This will be a departure from my usual talk about baseball aerodynamics. I am not rare person who thinks baseball is good for kids. I heard the president of the Lobo Little League talk about what baseball teaches us on opening day in March, 2013, and I bought it hook, Continue Reading

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Seam-Shifted Wake Timeline: Part 5

Posted on November 13, 2023November 13, 2023 by bartonlsmith

Link to Part 1 Link to Part 2 Link to Part 3 Link to Part 4 Starting with the 2020 season, Seam-Shifted Wake entered the baseball lexicon. It was mentioned on broadcasts by David Cone (who took time to let me explain it), Ron Darling, and Mike Petriello. Traffic on Continue Reading

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Seam-Shifted Wake Timeline Part 4

Posted on November 7, 2023March 14, 2025 by bartonlsmith

SSW moves to MLB Link to Part 1 Link to Part 2 Link to Part 3 March, 2020, I was invited to Blue Jays Spring training camp by Matt Buschman. I met separately with the MLB side and the MiLB side. There was an MiLB coach who I didn’t get Continue Reading

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Seam-Shifted Wake Timeline Part 3

Posted on November 2, 2023June 25, 2024 by bartonlsmith

What did we know and when did we know it? Link to Part 1 Link to Part 2 In Part 3, I’ll discuss the discovery of Seam-Shifted Wake. I began trying to explain how sinkers work in earnest in early 2019. Initially, led by the ideas of Driveline and their Continue Reading

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Seam-Shifted Wake Timeline Part 2

Posted on October 26, 2023November 2, 2023 by bartonlsmith

What we knew and when we knew it Link to Part 1 In Part 2, I’ll talk about our early baseball measurements. In 2017, I had a notion to try to measure flow over a baseball with PIV. I hired an undergraduate student to build trigger electronics. He mostly completed Continue Reading

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Seam-Shifted Wake Timeline Part 1

Posted on October 19, 2023October 26, 2023 by bartonlsmith

What did we know, and when did we know it? I’ve decided to write down the whole thing. I have several motivations. None of this will be about what SSW is or how it works. That’s in the various posts in this blog and our published articles. Part 1 will Continue Reading

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How to “Dial In” a Hack Attack to desired RPM and Velo: Post 75

Posted on July 19, 2022July 19, 2022 by bartonlsmith

Our high school owns a Hack Attack pitching machine. These machines have 3 solid wheels. We own the huge one that can do nearly anything. BUT, when you are operating it, any adjustment to the knobs alters RPM and velo at the same time, and often in the opposite way Continue Reading

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Effect of Velocity or Altitude on Seam Shifted Wake. Part 3 of 4: Post 74

Posted on April 28, 2022April 28, 2022 by bartonlsmith

This is the third post based on John Garrett’s MS Thesis. Like 73, this won’t stand on its own. I recommend starting back at 72. Since the start of this work, all of our measurements have been made at 90 mph. We chose that number using what a friend of Continue Reading

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NEW SSW RESULTS: Effect of Seams Upstream (PART 2 OF 4). POST 73

Posted on February 19, 2022April 28, 2022 by bartonlsmith

Part 1 was focused on non-spinning balls in a 4S configuration at 90 mph. This post will turn the ball 90º to focus on 2S orientations. In the next post, we’ll talk about results from lower and higher speeds followed by spinning baseballs. For each of these cases, there are Continue Reading

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