Notes for Episode 44: Spin Rate and Exit Velocity

Spin rate and exit velocity have become among the most common "advanced stats" to enter the baseball vernacular in recent times. In today's episode, we go into small detail about what these stats are, and how they can represent what happens in different outcomes within games.

Exit velocity is something that has possibly always been a visual part of the game. For as long as baseball has been around, people have remarked about the strength/speed with which a ball was hit, and how that may have affected the result of the play. The only difference between then and now is that we can measure it! This has increased out understanding of the sport, and teams are trying to do what they can in their player development phases to maximize this skill within their batters in hopes that it helps translate to major-league success.

Spin rate is a less obvious entry to the statistics community, based strictly on what can be observed. Instead of thinking about it as actual spin, think about it as the easiest way to measure pitch movement. Thinking about it this way, it becomes clear as to why this is now being measured, and why teams would make a point about doing what they can when working with their players in increase this metric. Below, you can find a link to our Google drive containing the spreadsheets used for this episode!

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1alMKyaniEFFuq7JmNRAFnI-VSdsZzFWF