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Seam-Shifted Wakes

aka laminar express

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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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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Post 72b: Separation upstream of a seam.

Posted on January 13, 2022January 13, 2022 by bartonlsmith

In post 72, I presented the map below (this post won’t make a lot of sense if you haven’t read that). This post will be about the blue region. A seam in this region (roughly from -10º to -28º) can sometimes cause laminar separation farther forward. The average location is Continue Reading

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New SSW Results: Baseballs these days don’t know who they want to be (Part 1 of 4). Post 72

Posted on January 11, 2022April 28, 2022 by bartonlsmith

My (now former) student, John Garrett (@jwillyg20) has been working on new measurements of Seam Shifted Wake (SSW) for a couple of years. He just wrapped them up around Christmas and will soon finalize his MS thesis. This and the next few posts will be based on that work. You Continue Reading

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The Cubs and Seam Shifted Wake: Post 70

Posted on April 11, 2021April 11, 2021 by bartonlsmith

I identify strongly with the Cubs and Seam-Shifted Wakes, so it’s a good day. Sahadev Sharma published an article in The Athletic on April 11, 2021 about how SSW affects the Cubs pitchers. He had noticed something I had also noted: that compared to a lot of teams, the Cubs Continue Reading

Posted In General, Seam-Shifted Wakes

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