Jake Odorizzi's Spin Efficiency Offers a Window into Broader Improvements

For appreciators of the pure craft of pitching, there must be few pitchers whose 2019 seasons were more enjoyable than that of Jake Odorizzi. He did so many new and nuanced things on the mound, forcing batters into tougher guessing games and dominating with the very command that had been absent for so much of his career to that point. One way to summarize that brilliance in a single number, without attempting to confine it to that number, is to look at the improvement in the spin efficiency on Odorizzi’s fastballs.

Spin efficiency is a decidedly unbeautiful term, more technical than aesthetic, but it’s a vital statistic. Baseball Savant reports the Statcast-estimated efficiency of the spin on every pitcher’s pitches, breaking it out by pitch type. Here, one can see that Rich Hill has the most spin-efficient curveball in the game—that is, the one that most closely approximates perfect topspin, meaning that all of the spin he generates with the pitch creates what the batter perceives as movement. While complicated on the surface, it’s very much a measure of style, and by extension, we can use it to appreciate Odorizzi.

As an over-the-top thrower who has always relied on elevating his fastball, Odorizzi already rated well in spin efficiency, before his mechanical and approach adjustments last year. In 2018, he had a spin efficiency of 89.2 percent on his heater, putting him in the 75th percentile among pitchers with at least 1,000 pitches thrown on the year. However, there was more in his tank.

Odorizzi’s more aggressive, cleaner mechanics, which he honed at the Florida Baseball Ranch prior to 2019, led to increased velocity. However, they also allowed him to demonstrate better command, and part of that was improved spin efficiency. In 2019, Odorizzi had a fastball spin efficiency of 91.4 percent, putting him in the league’s 86th percentile.

Baked into that number is Odorizzi’s increased use of his sinker, a pitch that rarely rates well in terms of spin efficiency. Sinkers, because of the seam position and the way the pitcher releases them, usually have an element of sidespin, which can become “wasted” spin. It’s not unfair, in the modern game, to think of many sinkers as flat fastballs—ones that lack the apparent rising action of four-seamers, and don’t make up for it with enough lateral movement to wiggle off the barrel of opponents’ bats. That’s why, league-wide, sinker usage has been in freefall for half a decade.

As anyone who watched Odorizzi last year surely noticed, though, his sinker was no mere flat heater. If thrown properly and with intention, a sinker can maintain plenty of active spin, with the changed alignment of the seams creating ample movement to the arm side. That’s what Odorizzi’s did, as he subtly lowered his release point. Paired with his four-seamer, splitter, cutter, curve, and slider, the sinker became a weapon, because Odorizzi was able to command it better.

On each of his pitches, Odorizzi had better command, which grew out of the entire mechanical process of his delivery, but also out of the relationship between his hand and the baseball. The improved spin efficiency was just an effect of that, but it was an important one.

Small manipulations, ones for which Odorizzi lacked the requisite feel the previous season, allowed him to move the ball around the strike zone, and even lead hitters out of it. His movement pattern, prior to 2019, was problematically two-dimensional: he could move the ball up and down, but struggled to throw to both sides of the plate and to surprise batters with varied pairs of pitches and locations, laterally.

It’s a tired line, but Odorizzi truly matured into a pitcher in 2019, as he learned to induce weak contact even when he wasn’t missing bats, and to stay around the strike zone even when he didn’t want to fill it up. Fastball spin can help us understand the way that paid off for him, because it was an outgrowth of his improvements in other areas, and because without the command that comes with improved spin efficiency, those other improvements might not have played out as nicely.

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