are all bullet-spins the same?

[Ken B]

When I release, the hand action is corkscrew--twisting the ball. Because the middle finger is the last to touch the ball, the ball spins horizontally. When I first tried it, I was in shock. I kept doing it and repeated the result over and over, then began playing with different feels. Lots of fun and very enlightening.

 

[JJsqueeze]

There is mass confusion about breaking pitches. I agree that most kids throw bullet spin for a riseball. It drops less than a pitch thrown with 12-6 spin. It drops more than one thrown with 6-12 or 1-7 spin. In combination with other pitches, it can be effective.

Bullet spin pitches are thrown a lot...that doesn't mean they move horizontally.

"Pitching" is about a combination of pitches. The batter forms an expectation of ball location based upon her observation of previous pitches. Any time the ball location ends up different than what the batter expected, the batter perceives a "break". A batter perceives "break" on the screwball because the release point and hand action is different from the fastball (whatever that might be), not because the ball moves.

JJ, on your baseball video, if I ignore the pitcher's hand, I don't see a break.

I do wish the had used a new ball for your softball video. The ball is really scuffed up. It looks to me like the axis is wobbling.

yeah...the clips leave something to be desired. I see break on the slider, but that dirty ball makes it difficult to see the spin on the Lawrie clip. I keep searching for good clips but so far the best spin clips are during MLB broadcasts and I keep missing those because I shuttle my little DNA copies to practice all the time. We have a weekend off so I am hoping to catch a crisp slider on the TV like those wicked two seamers I caught in the LCS

 

[smddad]

The spin keeps the bullet "true" during its flight.

What do you mean by "true"?

 

[corlay]

What do you mean by "true"?

I think he means - no sideways movement?

Which, if the ball was uniformly and symmetrically smooth (like a rifle bullet), I would 100% agree with.

But I personally strongly suspect that the seams on a softball, depending upon relationship to the axis of rotation,
can impart some degree of movement. Coupled with the fact that I also suspect that a pitch is never "perfectly" bullet-spinning (like a rifle bullet).
Rather, each pitch rotation-axis always has some degree of deviance from level (tilt) and vector (yaw). It would be a neat experiment to try and measure how MUCH deviance in tilt or yaw,
it takes to affect movement, and if one variable produces more effect on the flight-path than the other.

I like JJ's suggestion that the rotation I am seeing and the break is akin to a baseball "slider". MLB sliders look to me like very close to "bullet spin",
so, probably without enough tilt or yaw deviation, then we must decide if the "break" is due to that smooth side/rough side magnus voodoo magic.

Funny. there are two hot-button topics on this forum that can really be polarizing: "does a riseball rise"? and anything to do with "the magnus effect".