Future Games: Pitching Data Dive
July 31, 2025
Prep Baseball hosted the official 2025 Future Games on July 23-27, where the best uncommitted talent from the Class of 2027 all met at LakePoint Sports in Emerson, Ga., to compete in live gameplay against each other across the two days. We previously highlighted the position players that led the event in various statistical categories measured during the pro-style workout that preceded the gameplay. In this story, we’ll be highlighting the event’s pitching leaders that we captured during the live innings each arm pitched throughout the event.
In this post, we’ll share with you the stat leaders from these stat categories collected using the TrackMan stadium units on-site at LakePoint.
2025 FUTURE GAMES:
Here are the leaderboards for the pitchers that took part in this premier annual event.
FASTBALL
MAX VELOCITY
Max Fastball Velocity: This metric calculates the speed of the pitch as it’s released from the pitcher’s hand.
HIGHEST AVG. SPIN RATE
Spin Rate: This metric calculates the rate of spin on the baseball as it leaves the pitcher’s hand, measured in revolutions per minute (rpm). Historical data shows that high-spin fastballs lessen the impact of gravity, allowing for more ‘rise’ (or less fall, in other words) as it carries through the zone. Low-spin fastballs typically indicate the pitch has greater horizontal action, often making it tougher to square up, but generally easier to make contact with, leading to more ground balls, while high-spin fastballs show a correlation with swings and misses.
HIGHEST AVG. IVB
Induced Vertical Break: Used in short form as "IVB," this metric is most important on fastballs for creating rise and on curveballs for creating depth – it can also have some use when measuring sliders and cutters as well. Sliders tend to be closer to zero inches while cutters are generally between 5 and 15 inches. Usually fastballs and curveballs with large IVB have higher spin efficiencies as well. Sliders generally have very little (closer to zero) IVB and very low spin efficiency. You could also categorize IVB into spin rate as this is part of the “useful movement” you’re looking for, and it’s also important to consider the pitch’s velocity as well as its release height when evaluating IVB measurements against each other.
HIGHEST AVG. HORIZONTAL MOVEMENT
Horizontal Break: Outlined on TrackMan’s own website: “... horizontal movement is measured in inches between where the pitch actually crosses the front of home plate side-wise, and where it would have crossed home plate side-wise if had it traveled in a perfectly straight line from release. A positive number means the break was to the right from the pitcher’s perspective, while a negative number means the break was to the left from the pitcher’s perspective.”
HIGHEST STRIKE ZONE RATE%
For some context, in 2023 MLB pitchers averaged an In Zone% of around 49 percent in live game settings measured across all pitch types, according to Statcast.