Spin Accuracy in MLB The Show 19

As someone interested in learning more about the spin characteristics of MLB pitches and how spin affects movement, I love querying Baseball Savant’s Statcast Search or scrolling through twitter to find slow motion videos of pitches at and just after release. This kind of video has been popularized by Driveline Baseball and their use of Edgertronic cameras for pitch design. But unless you own an Edgertronic camera, these videos are a bit hard to come by, though I have found that the best collection is, of course, that of Pitching Ninja on twitter.

It would certainly be nice if every moment of every Major League game was recorded from every angle, and we could watch every pitch back in vivid detail. While this isn’t even close to the case in reality, it essentially exists in the part- video game, part- baseball simulation: MLB The Show 19. The game is known for its realism when it comes to player appearance, batting stances, and unique player movements. But how well does the game represent the spin characteristics of some of the league’s most successful pitches? I ventured to find out.

Fastball: Justin Verlander

The fastball is be the easiest pitch to simulate, I would imagine. It just spins backwards. In 2018, Justin Verlander had the most successful four-seamer according to FanGraphs. Here’s how it spun:

Verlander’s pitch tended to spin directly end-over-end which is the definition of 100% spin efficiency (meaning that there was no bullet spin, so 100% of the spin on the pitch contributed to movement). This particular pitch appears to have a spin axis of about 1:00. Hopefully this gif helps illustrate that this pitch’s spin axis is 1:00 because the back of the ball is spinning towards what would be 1:00 on the face of a 2D clock.

A few notes: 1) I am assuming that this Verlander fastball and all pitches below are representative of each pitcher’s typical pitch. Obviously there will always be some pitch-to-pitch variation, but in my experience, I think it’s fair to make this assumption. 2) Spin rate is also a very important characteristic of spin, and Verlander’s fastball is known for having a very high spin rate, but that’s not something easily measured or seen on MLB The Show so in this case, it isn’t a relevant aspect of each pitch’s spin profile.

So how does MLB The Show represent Verlander’s fastball? I did my best to re-create the gif above in the recently released MLB The Show 19, using Verlander, and this is what I got:

What is most obvious here is that the game makes no attempt to model the complex system of the wrist and fingers snapping to impart spin on the ball. Although that would be super cool, it’s no surprise that the game lacks that level of biomechanical detail.

In terms of spin characteristics, the resemblance between reality and the game is weak to say the least. This pitch appears to be spinning much slower, at a different axis, and with much lower efficiency (as seen by the bit of bullet spin on the ball). This pitch almost looks more like a cutter, which makes me wonder…

Cutter, Corey Kluber

First, the real pitch:

When you break it down, a cutter is a mix between a fastball and a slider. A good cutter usually has a spin efficiency between 40% and 60% (fastballs are usually 90–100%, and sliders are typically 0–30% efficient, so cutters are a split between the middle), and Kluber’s is among the best in the game.

Here it is according to The Show:

This pitch spins like a four-seamer! There is almost complete backspin at an 11:30 or 12:00 spin axis, which is not really what Kluber’s cutter, or any cutter for that matter, does on its path to the plate.

Now here’s what’s interesting. The simulated pitches are different. I have zero experience in video game development, but if I were in charge of making pitches spin in MLB The Show, I would probably just make them all spin the same, right? Movement is not dependent on spin in this game, as the developers can make anything happen. Physics doesn’t exist. So why are the pitches spinning differently at all? I would think that the developers would go for full accuracy or no spin variation at all, but it appears they settled on something in the middle.

Could we see a different trend with breaking balls?

Curveball: Seth Lugo

Lugo is famous, or perhaps infamous at this point, for his high spin rate on his curveball. Here’s how he releases it:

Here you can see, he rips through the ball to achieve near-perfect topspin which again means near 100% spin efficiency. This individual pitch has an axis around 6:00, living up to the name “12–6 Curveball.”

Don’t strain your eyes on this one, we’re not exactly dealing with Edgertronic footage here. But the spin is actually pretty similar to reality Maybe curveballs are modeled well by The Show! But this is just a sample size of 1. So let’s make it n=2 with an Aaron Nola curveball:

This is a great view of Nola’s high efficiency, 2–2:30 spin axis pitch (and subsequent nasty movement). And the video game version:

Well, it looks like a curveball! Doesn’t really look like Nola’s curveball, but it does look like a curveball.

Remember when I said that if I was in charge of coding the spin of pitches in this game, I’d do them all the same? Well maybe that’s exactly what the developers did, but with one spin animation per pitch type (instead of one animation for everything), as these two curveballs look to be animated similarly. I’m hoping this isn’t the case, because if it is, we won’t be able to use The Show to practice analyzing pitch spin at all, as all pitchers would be throwing the same fastballs, curveballs, etc., which doesn’t mirror real life. Let’s test out this hypothesis with sliders.

Slider: Patrick Corbin and Sean Newcomb

As a refresher, sliders are typically thrown with bullet spin, meaning that they are meant to have *low* efficiency. One of the best in the league belongs to new National Patrick Corbin.

Notice how his fingers get around the left side of the ball at release so that the ball will get that bullet spin. Because of the depth and horizontal movement of this pitch, it likely isn’t a perfect bullet spinning pitch, instead having slight topspin and side spin causing that extra movement.

Here it is in The Show:

This pitch comes out of Corbins hand with no bullet spin. What do we call a slider with no bullet spin? A fastball, generally. So again, the virtual representation of this pitch, in terms of spin characteristics, is just wrong. But is it *consistent* with other sliders in the game?

Let’s examine the case of Sean Newcomb, chosen because 1) he is also a lefty, 2) his slider on Pitching Ninja has easily recognizable spin.

It all rides on this:

It’s basically the same as Corbin’s. It has visibly less spin than Corbin’s slider, but a similar axis and efficiency. But most importantly, it does not mirror the reality of Newcomb’s slider spin, essentially confirming our grim hypothesis. Sigh.

Conclusion

In this article we have established that MLB The Show 19 does not accurately represent the unique spin of any particular pitcher’s pitch type like Verlander’s fastball or Lugo’s curveball. This is a little sad because, if the pitches’ spin did simulate reality then we could use the video game as a tool to analyze the spin of MLB pitches and potentially aid the pitch design process.

As far as I understand it, the state of current public biomechanical analysis and pitch design for pitchers involves a motion capture system comprised of 10–20 cameras, positioned so that each part of the pitchers body can be seen by at least two of the cameras. As the cost of high speed cameras goes down, it isn’t crazy to imagine a motion capture setup like the ones that exist today but that allow for Edgertronic-speed and powerful zoom to make today’s video game 360 views a reality for the player development efforts of tomorrow.

I found changeups, splitters, and knuckleballs to follow a similar pattern: they had different spins from each other in the The Show, but each changeup spun similarly to each other changeup, as was the case with splitters and knuckleballs, with only a little variation pitch-to-pitch and no clear resemblance to the pitcher’s actual spin profile on their pitch.