@baseballhs posted:Definitely not an expert on it, but like you, have read some things to try to get an understanding. Agree that it isn't necessarily high spin rate, it is a spin rate that is higher or lower than average. Basically making the ball move differently than anticipated due to the way an average fastball typically moves. I started looking at it before my son committed. We were at a Vanderbilt camp and my son and another kid had basically the same velo. Both boys were asked to stay after and tour the facilities. After the camp, they sent us all the trackman data from their 3 minutes outing, but it also included everyone else in the spreadsheet. My son's spinrate was higher than average, the other kid's spinrate much lower than average. They committed the other kid a few days later. They called my son for months but never offered. The other kid was pretty small compared to mine so I always thought it had to do with spinrate, as they were both equally effective in their outings.
My son has never thrown a 2 seam either, but is not an over the top pitcher. For the 26.6 Bauer Units on my son's fb: 93.5 SR: 2484 IVM 14.9 IHM 19.6
Thanks for the reply! Your son's numbers look awesome. Can I ask where your son committed? Both of my boys were/are pretty clearly at D3 level, but we're very happy with the schools, fit etc. (High academic small liberal arts colleges in MN.)
Tons of luck and chance factors figure into who gets an offer and who doesn't. I'm just happy my boys can keep playing. I'm pretty sure his school has Rapsodo / Trackman, so next year at this time they will have the numbers on him and teach him. But I still wish I understood his current numbers better.
Both you and I have boys over 24 on the Bauer units, so that would imply not to work down with a 2-seamer. My only question there was how far above 24 do you have to be to make that the case? Is 26 "far enough" above 24 to make that the case? From what I've read, it is. And yes, our two boys show, I believe, that the Bauer measurement is not an absolute measurement (like higher or lower velo), but rather a relative "score," if that makes sense. Your boy has way higher velo and spin rate than mine, but the same Bauer score, because the Bauer score is simply telling you what approach you should take with your pitches. Because clearly your son is on an entirely different level! To push it even farther, Yu Darvish and Blake Snell have an identical score to our boys: 26.6 and 26.7. So the Bauer score isn't saying that our boys and those two pitchers are all at the same level! And Aroldis Chapman scores lower: 25.2. So the misunderstanding comes from seeing the Bauer score as a kind of simple "ranking," I think.
Maybe a good analogy for a Bauer unit score is something like a credit rating: you can be a bad credit risk or a good credit risk and that number is on the same scale, but that doesn't tell you how much money you have or your overall financial value. Someone making $500,00/year and someone making $30,000 / year can have the same credit rating or very different credit ratings. The rating just tells you, within your world, what you should or shouldn't do.
But still not sure what to do with the IVB and the HM numbers (or why my boy's has the negative sign in front of the HM number).
Here's a good very Trackman write up for a 2021 kid my son actually used to play with; it's exactly what I would like to know about my son's numbers (even if the news isn't that great, and/or his numbers change, which they will, lol):