Alex Vesia didn\u2019t know he possessed a superpower. A late-round draft pick with a few cups of coffee in the big leagues, Vesia had neither great numbers nor notable prospect status. He was Clark Kent all the way.<\/p>\n
But when the Los Angeles Dodgers traded for the lefty reliever in 2021, they practically handed him a mask and a cape.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey asked me, \u2018Do you know what the vert is on your fastball?\u2019\u201d Vesia said. \u201cI was like, \u2018What are you talking about?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Induced vertical break \u2014 that\u2019s what the Dodgers were talking about.<\/p>\n
For more than a century, it was the hidden secret behind some of the game\u2019s greatest fastballs, an ability so powerful that it was long considered a myth, dismissed by science but recognized by scouts. Their reports told of fastballs with \u201clife,\u201d of four-seamers that turned \u201cinvisible.\u201d These pitches could rise like ghosts, and hitters would swing right through them. This was more than velocity. These pitches were special, and could seem to move upwards in some immeasurable way.<\/p>\n
Then, roughly a decade ago, curious minds began to gather fresh data and learn the truth behind the rising fastball.<\/p>\n
It was real, in a sense. When a ball doesn\u2019t fall at the rate our brains expect it to, it looks to the human eye like it is rising. That perception of rise is created by a ball spinning on a proper axis, generating lift from the seams, fighting gravity as it crosses the plate. The phenomenon came to be known as induced vertical break, a discovery that has changed everything about modern pitching.<\/p>\n
\u201cI like to call it the Gerrit Cole Era,\u201d San Diego Padres starter Michael King said. \u201cThat\u2019s when everybody started throwing that four-seamer at the top of the zone.\u201d<\/p>\n
Today\u2019s pitchers throw bullpen sessions and make a game of guessing each fastball\u2019s \u201cvert,\u201d and discussing its \u201cride,\u201d another term for the phenomenon. Most big leaguers produce roughly 16 inches of induced vertical break with their four-seam fastballs, but a select few can routinely get to 20 inches.<\/p>\n
Vesia has averaged 21 inches this season, the most in the majors. He led the league in induced vertical break last year, too. His velocity is pedestrian \u2014 he sits 92 to 94 mph \u2014 but opponents are hitting .167 against his fastball. In five seasons with the Dodgers, Vesia has a 2.61 ERA with more than 12 strikeouts per nine innings. He pitched in four of five World Series games last year and got the save in Game 2.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I throw the ball down the middle and a guy swings through it, it makes sense,\u201d Vesia said.<\/p>\n
It makes sense because big-league hitters aren\u2019t programmed to hit a fastball with that much induced vertical break. They\u2019ve faced thousands of fastballs, and when they see one at a certain speed from a certain arm angle, they\u2019re trained to anticipate a certain path across the plate. A pitch with above-average carry changes that calculus.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I see 18 to 20 (inches of induced vertical break), I have to swing two balls above it,\u201d Boston Red Sox outfielder Rob Refsnyder said.<\/p>\n
Easier said than done. And the same could be said for induced vertical break itself. Not every pitcher can create it with ease, and not every pitcher needs to, but the ability to manipulate and understand vertical movement \u2014 to determine who has it, how to generate it and what to do with it \u2014 has revolutionized the game.<\/p>\n
Fastballs aren\u2019t breaking balls, but they aren\u2019t necessarily straight, either. Fastballs can move down (sink), to the glove side (cut), or to the arm side (run). And yes, in a manner of speaking, fastballs can rise. A rising fastball is often labeled an illusion \u2014 the ball can\u2019t literally move up \u2014 but pitches spin, and balls have seams, and the Magnus effect creates lift. Fastballs can, and almost always do, cross the plate higher than gravity says they should.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe tilt, or the spin direction of the ball, the grip,\u201d Red Sox director of pitching Justin Willard said, \u201call of these things factor into how much ride or carry or lift that you\u2019re creating.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pitching coaches use something called a short-form movement plot to measure pitch movement as if gravity didn\u2019t exist. (In theory, a seamless ball thrown with no spin would have zero inches of induced vertical break.) Pitchers who generate more than 20 inches of induced vertical break can throw a fastball that seems destined for the letters but finishes closer to the shoulders, or a fastball that seems headed toward the dirt but nips the bottom of the zone.<\/p>\n
Here, Logan Gilbert throws a slider with zero\/zero movement on the left, and a fastball of his with 16 inches of vert on the right, followed by an overlay of the two to see what 16 inches of vert looks like in the real world.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It\u2019s deception through movement, not all that different from a biting slider or a darting changeup. Induced vertical break defies a hitter\u2019s expectations, which is at the heart of pitching.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s essentially, how weird can you make your arsenal?\u201d Willard said.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s not much weirder than a pitch that seems to do the impossible. The notion of a rising fastball predates any scientific explanation. Hal Newhouser, the Hall of Fame lefty, wrote a nationally syndicated newspaper column in 1949 explaining the purpose of a windup, the shapes of various pitches and the value of pitching to different locations.<\/p>\n
\u201cA rising fast ball,\u201d Newhouser wrote, \u201cis pitched from the waist up. This usually results in long flies or pop-ups.\u201d<\/p>\n
Walter Johnson, Bob Feller, Sandy Koufax, Tom Seaver, Jim Palmer, Nolan Ryan and countless others were said to throw rising fastballs even as scientists occasionally clarified that such a pitch was physically impossible.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would invite them, at their leisure,\u201d Pittsburgh Pirates third base coach Rich Donnelly said in 1993, \u201cto bat against Roger Clemens, Rob Dibble and Dwight Gooden and then tell me it\u2019s an optical illusion.\u201d<\/p>\n
A St. Louis Post-Dispatch story in 1990 noted that, while some physicists felt that extreme velocity created the appearance of rise, no less an authority than Bob Gibson \u201cinsisted that the aerodynamics of air working on a baseball\u2019s raised seams can make the thing rise.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gibson had the right idea.<\/p>\n
Technology now exists not only to measure induced vertical break, but also to pinpoint the various factors \u2014 velocity, grip, arm slot, spin rate, spin axis, etc. \u2014 that create and amplify it. Pitchers and organizations game plan around the ability to create lift, either tweaking a delivery to maximize it, or changing the pitch mix of pitchers who simply don\u2019t have it. Texas Rangers starter Nathan Eovaldi has long been one of baseball\u2019s hardest throwers, but his fastball creates only average vertical break. His success has come from changing speeds and mixing pitches, not firing 97-mph fastballs at the top of the zone.<\/p>\n
\u201cI still try going up,\u201d Eovaldi said. \u201cIt\u2019s just I feel like sometimes they foul them off. \u2026 Sometimes I just scratch my head.\u201d<\/p>\n
About a decade ago, a combination of technology, data and curiosity eliminated some of that head scratching and found the truth in the mystery.<\/p>\n
It was late 2013, maybe 2014, when Tampa Bay Rays minor league pitching coordinator Kyle Snyder was introduced to a man named Josh Kalk. Snyder was a former first-round pick whose big-league career had ended at age 30 with a 5.57 ERA. Kalk was a former math and physics professor who\u2019d gotten into baseball with a job in the Rays\u2019 analytics department.<\/p>\n
The pair were still getting to know each other when Kalk walked into a Longhorn Steakhouse in Princeton, W. Va., then the home of the Rays\u2019 short-season affiliate. He carried a stack of papers showing PITCHf\/x plots for various pitchers Snyder had coached the previous two years.<\/p>\n
There was something else: The top page contained data on Snyder himself.<\/p>\n
For a decade in pro ball, Snyder had tried to unlock his own potential so that he could stick in the major leagues. With a few charts and numbers over dinner, Kalk laid bare the missed opportunities.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe most powerful moment of my career,\u201d Snyder said. \u201cHe goes, \u2018You threw sinkers. You should have thrown four-seamers. Your slider was better than your curveball. Your curveball was too slow.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Right there on paper, five years too late, was the career-saving information Snyder needed.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was such a powerful moment for me in terms of how tech and science was going to change baseball and pitching development,\u201d Snyder said. \u201cI\u2019ll never forget that moment. It changed the course of my career, and I owe a ton \u2014 an absolute ton \u2014 to Josh Kalk.\u201d<\/p>\n
Few, if any, have done more than Kalk to shape the modern understanding of pitching. He is quick to say he wasn\u2019t the first or only person to do this work, but others tout his influence. The pitch-tracking era was still young when Kalk began mining underlying metrics for a better understanding of what makes pitches effective. Under progressive thinkers such as Snyder and former general manager Andrew Friedman, the Rays applied Kalk\u2019s analysis to build an organizational reputation for elite pitching.<\/p>\n
Well before the advent of Statcast, Kalk studied numbers from the league, which made league-wide PITCHf\/x data publicly available in 2008, popularizing the notion of spin rate. But the online PITCHf\/x data presented in Javascript was limited. Kalk, whose academic background includes a minor in computer science, figured out how to access the underlying XML file. That, it turned out, was the motherlode.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou looked at the entire sample of the data,\u201d Kalk said, \u201cand then you were able to see some indications of pitchers that had movement that looked like this (and) were performing better than pitchers that had movement that performed like something else.\u201d<\/p>\n
Spin rate was the buzzword for much of the 2010s, but Kalk realized movement was the Holy Grail.<\/p>\n
\u201cInduced vertical break has always been the second-most important metric (after velocity),\u201d Kalk said. \u201cI don\u2019t know whether some teams got obsessed with spin rate in reality or whether that was just a talking point, but induced vertical break outperforms spin rate in every pitching metric that you want to look at. And I\u2019m free saying that right now because everybody knows that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ten years ago, such analysis was still proprietary; Kalk instructed Rays coaches to say \u201cspin rate\u201d in interviews because he didn\u2019t want other organizations to pick up on Tampa Bay\u2019s true priority. The Rays weren\u2019t chasing spin. They were chasing movement, which doesn\u2019t come from spin alone.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re after the break value, right?\u201d Snyder said. \u201cWe\u2019re not after the ingredients that could potentially influence the break value.\u201d<\/p>\n
Does having significant ride on your fastball mean you\u2019re a great pitcher? No. But having a couple previously undervalued relievers sitting atop the leaderboard this year does underline the value of good fastball shape. \n <\/p>\n
Most fastball ride in 2025<\/p>\n
Kalk is now vice president of baseball operations strategy and innovation for the Minnesota Twins, Friedman is president of baseball operations for the defending champion Dodgers and Snyder is in his eighth season as the Rays\u2019 major-league pitching coach.<\/p>\n
From a stack of papers in a chain restaurant in West Virginia to the video boards of most big-league ballparks, induced vertical break is everywhere, if you know where to look. Today\u2019s pitchers talk about \u201cvert\u201d nearly as often as they talk about \u201cvelo.\u201d Padres pitching coach Ruben Niebla, who, like Snyder, is considered one of the better instructors in the game, said he often reminds his pitchers of their movement readings between innings.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is the first thing science did, in my opinion, to really influence the game,\u201d Snyder said. \u201cR&D departments started to get really built out, recognizing the importance of some of these things \u2026 Not to simply tell a guy, \u2018Stay behind the ball,\u2019 but put drill packages together to help him be able to understand appropriate steps of how to achieve that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now, players arrive in the big leagues with prior knowledge. Kyle Boddy, the founder of Driveline Baseball and a special advisor to Red Sox chief baseball officer Craig Breslow, said he rarely needs to explain the concept of induced vertical break.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t have to anymore,\u201d Boddy said. \u201cPitchers aren\u2019t dummies.\u201d<\/p>\n
When Red Sox starter Lucas Giolito changed his mechanics in 2019, the induced vertical break on his four-seam fastball improved by 2 1\/2 inches. He ditched his sinker, threw his four-seamer 55 percent of the time and enjoyed the best season of his career.<\/p>\n
Atlanta Braves reliever Dylan Lee also threw two-seamers when he was younger, and he spent years in pro ball trying to master a curveball. It got him released by the Marlins. He\u2019s since built an excellent career throwing mostly four-seamers and sliders out of the Braves bullpen. Even when Lee tries to reduce the vertical break on a changeup and make it sink, he finds his arm angle just isn\u2019t right for it. Lee\u2019s delivery is built for pitches with carry.<\/p>\n
San Diego Padres reliever Jeremiah Estrada similarly can\u2019t explain his tendency for vertical movement. He grew up trying to mimic Pedro Martinez\u2019s changeup, but otherwise did what felt comfortable. He wound up with mechanics that naturally spin a fastball on just the right axis for maximum vert.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo this day, I\u2019m still doing the same thing,\u201d said Estrada, the hardest thrower among the majors\u2019 top 25 pitchers in terms of four-seam induced vertical break. \u201cJust go out there and throw it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Since the beginning of 2024, Estrada owns the single fastball with the most recorded vert: 27 inches. He recorded it on this strikeout in June 2024.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The four-seam fastball, amid a decades-long decline in usage, remains the majors\u2019 most popular weapon. According to Statcast, four-seamers account for almost a third of all pitches thrown this season. The next-closest pitch is the slider, at 22.3 percent.<\/p>\n
This helps explain Kalk\u2019s belief that a pitcher\u2019s fastball shape is akin to a fingerprint. It\u2019s ingrained and, for many, almost impossible to change.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat led me to believe that,\u201d Kalk said, \u201cwas a lot of attempts to try to change that and few successes. Not zero but few.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s easier, Kalk said, for a pitcher to learn a new changeup, or a slider or sweeper. Fixing a poor fastball without making drastic adjustments tends to present a far greater challenge, even for the most talented pitchers on the planet. <\/p>\n
Some pitchers don\u2019t need extreme vertical break to create four-seam deception. Lower arm slots naturally create less vertical movement \u2014 Pittsburgh Pirates phenom Paul Skenes, for example, produces a modest amount of induced vertical break \u2014 but those arm slots also create different expectations for hitters. Fifteen inches of induced vertical break from a 20-degree arm slot could have the same effect as 20 inches of vertical break from an over-the-top delivery. Think Josh Hader or Zack Wheeler. The deception is what matters.<\/p>\n
The true \u201cdead zone\u201d is the vert you\u2019d expect given a certain arm slot. You can then express \u201cgood\u201d ride as vert over that expectation, as public analyst Alex Chamberlain does on his leaderboards with \u201cDead Zone delta\u201d stats. Here are the leaders, minimum 900 fastballs, this year in ride over dead zone expectation. \n <\/p>\n
Best ride compared to arm slot<\/p>\n
\u201cArm slot is the highest correlated thing to spin direction,\u201d Willard said. \u201cSpin direction is the highest correlated thing to Magnus lift.\u201d<\/p>\n
Toward that end, Padres starter Michael King has worked to improve his vert by slightly shifting his release. He is a lower-slot righty with a crossfire delivery and more proclivity for horizontal movement than vertical ride. However, since 2022, his four-seam fastball has been a significant part of his repertoire, and this year, the average induced vertical break on that pitch rose from 15 inches to 17 inches. That has resulted in increased separation \u2014 more deception \u2014 between his four-seamer and his sinker.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy axis is still never going to be right at 12 o\u2019clock,\u201d King said. \u201cBut if my sinker\u2019s at that 2:15 or 2:30 mark, if I can get that four-seamer to be closer to a 1 o\u2019clock axis, that\u2019s where I can get to 17s and above.\u201d<\/p>\n
Less than a decade ago, virtually no one in baseball spoke in such terms. Now, King revels in the fact that his home stadium, Petco Park, recently began displaying the vertical and horizontal movement of every pitch on ribbon boards behind home plate.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s how far induced vertical break has come. In a little more than a decade, it\u2019s gone from a stack of papers on a steakhouse table in West Virginia to the LED displays of multiple Major League stadiums. Induced vertical break \u2014 once you know where and how to find it \u2014 tells the story of modern pitch design, even as teams continue striving for the next frontier, whatever it might be.<\/p>\n
\u201cMathematically, there is an actual theorem out there saying you can never know everything there is to know about math,\u201d Kalk said. \u201cAnd if you can\u2019t know everything there is to know about math, then you can\u2019t know everything there is to know about everything that is built off math.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pitching, it turns out, is one of those things.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo,\u201d Kalk said, \u201cthere will always be more to discover.\u201d<\/p>\n
With reports from The Athletic\u2019s Fabian Ardaya and Dan Hayes<\/p>\n
(Illustration: Kelsea Petersen \/ The Athletic; Jayne Kamin-Oncea \/ Getty Images)\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alex Vesia didn\u2019t know he possessed a superpower. A late-round draft pick with a few cups of coffee…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":150297,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[592,4996,64,63,1186,5156,5158,5256,5257,5258,5259,5260,5163,5261,5262,1187,1188,5159,2364,591,1830,2704,5263,2365,5160,1189,5157,5162,85,2366,1190,2367,5161,5264],"class_list":["post-150296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-arizona-diamondbacks","tag-atlanta-braves","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-baltimore-orioles","tag-boston-red-sox","tag-chicago-cubs","tag-chicago-white-sox","tag-cincinnati-reds","tag-cleveland-guardians","tag-colorado-rockies","tag-detroit-tigers","tag-houston-astros","tag-kansas-city-royals","tag-los-angeles-angels","tag-los-angeles-dodgers","tag-miami-marlins","tag-milwaukee-brewers","tag-minnesota-twins","tag-mlb","tag-new-york-mets","tag-new-york-yankees","tag-oakland-athletics","tag-philadelphia-phillies","tag-pittsburgh-pirates","tag-san-diego-padres","tag-san-francisco-giants","tag-seattle-mariners","tag-sports","tag-st-louis-cardinals","tag-tampa-bay-rays","tag-texas-rangers","tag-toronto-blue-jays","tag-washington-nationals"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=150296"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150296\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/150297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=150296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=150296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}