Every pitch in baseball has what’s called Vertical and Horizontal movement as it approaches the plate. Vertical and Horizontal movement is defined as the magnitude of “break” a pitch has, either up or down (vertical), or laterally (horizontal). Essentially, both movements indicate the pitch’s trajectory deviating from a straight line as it crosses the plate.
Measurement
Vertical and Horizontal movement is measured in inches and can be recorded through ball tracking technology like Trackman, Rapsodo, Hawkeye, and PITCHf/x. It’s important to note that these technologies can track movement in different ways.
For example, Trackman provides two different vertical movement metrics. “Induced Vertical Movement” and “Vertical Movement.” Trackman’s “Induced Vertical Movement” is similar to Rapsodo movement data because they both remove gravity from their calculations. “Induced Vertical Movement” accounts for solely the spin-induced movement imparted by the pitcher.
Conversely, Trackman’s “Vertical movement” which is comparable to Hawkeye and used by MLB Statcast, is measured with the impact of gravity on the ball. This metric records the entirety of the ball’s flight which makes the movement numbers much larger than Trackman’s Induced Vertical Movement and Rapsodo data.
Keep in mind, there is only one measurement for Horizontal movement when comparing Trackman, Rapsodo, and Hawkeye. So, there’s no need to account for a significant difference in your calculation.
Lastly, Pitch f/x data measures induced vertical and horizontal movement approximately 40 feet from home plate as opposed to from pitch release. This recorded data is normally less than the movement figures picked up by other technologies. You can compare Pitch f/x to Trackman “Induced Vertical Movement” and Rapsodo by multiplying the Pitch f/x measurement by 1.8.
For example, if Pitch f/x records a pitch at 9.3 inches, you can multiply 9.3 by 1.8 and that will give you a rough estimation as to the “induced vertical movement” of the pitch.
It’s very important to be aware of which data points you are reviewing to understand how they are measured when trying to analyze how much movement a pitch has.
Visualizing Movement
Trackman and Rapsodo are commonly used in Player Development and display movement data using an X-Y plot, where the X-axis shows horizontal movement and the Y-axis displays vertical movement.
Data points found to the right of the Y-axis contain positive values, while those found to the left are negative. These positive and negative values indicate the direction the ball’s moving in and the numerical value signifies the amount of break in inches.
For example, a slider thrown by a right-handed pitcher with –8 on the X-axis is moving 8 inches to his glove side. This same pitch from a left-handed pitcher would be +8 on the X-axis illustrating that both pitches contain 8 inches of break, but move in different directions due to handedness.
Summary
As we’ve learned Vertical and Horizontal movement can be measured in different ways. While these metrics are important in evaluating a pitch’s profile, understanding how each technology calculates movement is integral in analyzing pitch data correctly.
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