Best of the Fall: 2025 Edition

The 2025 fall season featured some of the highest-quality events in the region, giving players the chance to measure themselves against the top talent in their state, class, and even nationally. From Scout Days to ID events and Top Prospect Games, athletes tested their skills in pro-style workouts, live competition, and advanced analytics sessions. Players updating their profiles through these events now connect with over 1,000 college programs and every MLB organization that subscribes to Prep Baseball’s trusted information, ensuring their performance is seen by the right eyes.

Best of the Fall 2026: Fastball Movement Leaders

As part of our Best of the Fall 2026 series, today we turn the focus to fastball movement, highlighting pitchers whose heaters showed standout traits during fall events across North Carolina. Using TrackMan data captured from both bullpens and live game play, this leaderboard features the average movement profiles produced over each session, providing a reliable look at how these fastballs consistently behaved.

The metrics highlighted here include Induced Vertical Break (IVB) and Horizontal Movement, two key components in understanding fastball shape and effectiveness. Horizontal Movement most often reflects arm-side run, though in some cases it can also indicate cutting action depending on the pitcher’s release and spin axis. IVB measures a fastball’s ride and carry through the zone—higher IVB numbers are commonly associated with fastballs that jump on hitters and play well at the top of the zone, while lower IVB values typically signal sinking action that can generate ground balls.

The leaderboards below showcase both overall leaders from the fall and class-by-class standouts, identifying pitchers with distinct fastball movement profiles. These arms bring measurable traits that help define pitch usage, game plans, and potential effectiveness heading into the spring season.

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FASTBALL MOVEMENT LEADERS

HIGHEST AVG. IVB

2026 GRADS

2027 GRADS

2028 GRADS

2029 GRADS

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

2026 GRADS

2027 GRADS

2028 GRADS

2029 GRADS

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.”

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