Another thread on deception led me to think about spin rate a a mode of deception. There has been a lot of talk in pitching circles of late concerning spin rate. I spent a lot of the weekend going over data on this as it concerns my son.
It seems that average spin rate on a fastball sits around 2200 rpm. The idea would be that the vast majority of pitchers are within 200 rpm of this rate. Given that fact, the theory, as I take it, is that because batters see movement on fastballs so often in this range, it is sort of the default position of a hitters experience when making the microsecond adaptions to ball flight.
So, I have, now four reference points for my son on his 4-seam fb. Three from Trackman data and one from Rapsodo gathered from the MLB PDP.
The first set of data I got from Trackman at last year's Jr. National Showcase seemed extremely low and I assumed some sort of problem with the equipment. His fastball spin rate was anywhere from 1100 rpm to 1600 rpm. I could find no other spin rates this low. Then Trackman data from WWBA last year at Lake Point showed only a slight increase - 1300-1800. From Lake Point during WWBA this year it showed about the same - generally 1400-1900 with a few outliers in the 1000 rpm range and one or two at the 2000-2050 range. When I received his MLB PDP report, it showed an average of 1700 with a single pitch at 1950 and the rest in the 1600-1800 range.
Now, looking at other profiles, I see nothing in this low of a range. Looking at the break from Rapsodo, it seems he also gets a much better vertical break than most other fastballs I see. I might expect this from a 2-seam fastball, but it sort of throws me coming from a 4-seam.
Not sure how any of this fits in, but I suspect it may cause more of the "deception" many recruiters see as his strong point than his unorthodox mechanics that they tend to attribute to it.