![]() The movie below shows the view at home plate from the side for the larger seamed ball in two orientations. One had a seam height (as measured by calipers) of 26/1000″ and the other 35/1000″ so we could determine if seam height matters. A Rapsodo Clip is shown below.īoth balls were 2019 vintage. All of these pitches had 3:00 tilt (a vertical spin axis), a relatively low RPM of 1200 (we did not want a lot of Magnus force but we wanted a stable axis) and 90 mph. They did 3 orientations with 2 different baseballs. View 2Īndrew and his friend Troy, who used to work for me for money but is as happy to work for food, fired 56 pitches. This ball could be moving up, down, left or right, but cannot be moving in or out of the page for this to work. I want to stress that for the purpose of this effect, it does not matter which direction the axis is as long as the ball has this orientation relative to the axis and there is no gyro component. ![]() In the animation below, the axis (pole) is sicking straight out of your screen. As a result, it makes a “loop” as it goes around the pole. The base of the the horseshoe on the front side is nearly at the pole (which would be our scuffball pitch), but is a bit past it. I’m going to call it The Looper, because of the seam pattern it makes as it spins. With more than a century of history, it’s hard to name pitches. But, my graduate student, Andrew Smith (who is looking for a job), found one. Knuckleballs that have no spin will “knuckle” due to the seam shifted wake, but the way they are thrown are not like other pitches. He says a 2-seam fastball from Cincinnati Reds pitcher Trevor Bauer thrown with seam shifted wake orientation has much more movement than when thrown with a traditional seam orientation.We have had a hard time demonstrating seam shifted wake pitches like the Laminar Express or the Discoball Changeup because our pitching machine (and, indeed, pretty much every pitching machine not located in Pullman) cannot do gyro. (Nationals pitcher Max) Scherzer throws a pitch that looks the same to me, yet it never moves the same way.” I am only sure that (Strasburg) gets it right at least 10% of the time. “And I’m not sure how much margin there is. If you miss your mark with seam orientation, it’s utterly different,” Smith says. ![]() “If you miss your mark slightly with a Magnus-dependent pitch, it moves slightly differently. Smith calls this seam shifted wake orientation. This change causes a pressure gradient that can force the ball downward or upward, left or right, depending on the position of the seam during its flight. A video produced for the APS/DFD Gallery of Fluid Motion at the annual meeting shows how a stable seam position on the ball can create a change in the wake. Smith says he and his team, postgraduate student Andrew Smith and undergraduate John Garrett, have been examining the effects of the wake of the baseball as it travels through the air. Less is known about forces due to the wake of the ball. It is what pitchers use to create curveballs, sinkers, sliders, or any pitch with movement. The Magnus Effect, which has been known since 1853, is the force exerted on a spinning object moving through the air. 24 at the Washington State Convention Center as part of the talk on drag reduction. The session, “ The Baseball Seam: Clever and Capable Passive Flow Control,” will take place at 9:31 a.m. Newswise - SEATTLE, Novem– While changing the rotation rate/axis of a thrown baseball has long been a weapon in a pitcher’s arsenal, some pitchers, like Washington Nationals star Stephen Strasburg, manipulate the baseball’s wake to create unexpected movement from a familiar delivery of his changeup.īarton Smith, an engineering professor at Utah State University, will discuss how the seams of the baseball influence its trajectory and speed toward home plate at the American Physical Society’s Division of Fluid Dynamics 72nd Annual Meeting in Seattle on Sunday, Nov.
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