Click here for the GitHub link This new version contains a model for the seam shifted wake. Before I get into it I want to make a couple of things clear. First, there is a quote from statistician George E.P. Box, “All models are wrong but some are useful.” I Continue Reading
Killing Laminar Flow: Post 56
When you hear people describe flow over baseballs, there is frequent reference to the seams causing Laminar flow to become Turbulent. To start, I’d better explain what those terms mean. Laminar flow is what Juniors in Physics or Engineering learn about in their fluid dynamics class. It is usually steady Continue Reading
Case Study– Good and Bad Discoball: Post 55
Michael Augustine (https://twitter.com/AugustineMLB) and I were recently discussing a couple of Strasburg “Discoball” changeups. The impetus of the discussion was Trip Somer’s new tool (Trip is @one_pitch_man) that allows one to enter tilt, efficiency and orientation of the pitch and visualize what that looks like spinning at any RPM from Continue Reading
Using Baseball Seams to Create Break:Post 54
This is the presentation that I have made to the staff of several Grapefruit-League MLB teams. I wanted to make it easily accessible to the rest of the MLB teams by putting a version here. I try to make most of my posts viewable on a phone, but this one Continue Reading
UMBA 1.1
Click here for the GitHub link. This update is primarily focused on making the code more functional. The major things I’ve added are: Multiple pitches code writes a file for each pitch code now asks if the user would like to compare another pitch a final set of plots shows Continue Reading
What Magnus Effect Looks Like: Post 53
My PhD Student, Nazmus Sakib, just published our first paper together, which was on Magnus Force and Reverse Magnus on golf balls. You can download it here if you are interested. While this site is about baseballs, Magnus is a lot easier to see on a golf ball since flow Continue Reading
UMBA 1.0
If you are unfamiliar with the Pitch Trajectory simulator UMBA, please visit our page about it here. You can download UMBA 1.0 here As of now, we don’t know enough about things like spin decay, spin axis changes during flight, seam height, scuffs, and of course seam orientation to model Continue Reading
Relationship between Orientation and gyro for Seam-Shifted Wake pitches: Post 52
We have previously stated that the “Looper” works for efficient (no gyro) pitches, and that the “laminar express” and “discoball” changeup require some gyro. I’ve been advocating that folks try the looper since I have been unable to tell them how much gyro they need for the other pitches. But Continue Reading
Describing Ball Orientation: Post 51
Note that this post has been updated to reflect an change in the origin of Orientation. One of our main messages has been that: The ball Orientation relative to the axis is important. And for the people who are willing to consider that idea, the obvious question is :how do Continue Reading
How to use the Looper and Scuffball: Post 50
We’ve recently shown results of two Seam Shifted Wake pitches with no gyro. The Scuffball and the Looper. These pitches involve using a specific orientation between the seams and the axis of rotation. As a result, we can generate break independently of the Magnus effect. One novel feature of these Continue Reading
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