Nine to Know: Advanced Sink from Preseason Events
March 30, 2022
On January 29 and 30, during the preseason of the 2022 season, PBR ran the top preseason events in North Carolina, the Preseason All-State. These two dates saw close to 200 of the top players in North Carolina go through full workouts. For the hitters, TrackMan was used to measure ball flight off the bat. One of the measurements gathered is exit velocity.
Today we take a look at 9 uncommitted players from the two Preseason All-State events. Each of these pitchers showed well above average sink metrics at the event. The bullpen sessions had TrackMan tracking each pitch and giving our scouting staff a ton of advanced metrics on each pitch.
To put together this list, we are using PBR's new Pitch Score, from the fastballs scored in each bullpen session. Not every pitch records a score as each pitch has to record a level of metrics that is deemed to be appropriate and identifiable. For fastballs, the scores developed and used by PBR are the Hop+, Rise+ and Sink+. You can learn more about each score by clicking on their links, and by following this link HERE to see about all Pitch Scores and their implementation. For this blog, we will be focusing on pitchers that scored well with their Sink+ metric.
Pitch scores are not a tool used to rank pitches, but a tool that gives scouts an idea on a pitch's movement, the suddenness of movement, and how hitters may approach a pitch. A score of 100 has been deemed the average score at the MLB level. The Pitch Score does take into account when a pitch moves, but it does not take into account all metrics on a pitch, so a high school player scoring 100 does not necessarily mean he has a MLB average pitch.
Sink+ Score: Sink is most commonly defined as a fastball that visually drops and runs arm-side through the strike zone. With Sink Score, our staff was able to create the Sink+ statistic to normalize our Sink Scores across all levels. We now have a simple way to objectively compare fastballs with sink characteristics between levels and over time with the Sink+ stat. The effectiveness of a fastball is very dependent on outside factors including location and pitch repertoire. In general, fastballs with a higher Sink Score are more difficult for the batter to square up.
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Nine to Know
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