West Coast Super Sophomore Games: Pitching Data Dive
September 30, 2025
The Prep Baseball staff has wrapped up the inaugural West Coast Super Sophomore Games in Eugene, OR. A huge thank you goes out to the entire Oregon staff for their incredible hospitality throughout the weekend and for helping make this premier event possible.
The event kicked off Friday morning with a full pro-style workout, featuring VALD-timed 60-yard dashes with splits, TrackMan hitting data, BLAST Motion swing analysis, and positional evaluations with velocity measurements. From there, players were split into teams and competed in three action-packed games, where pitchers’ TrackMan metrics were captured live in game.
Yesterday, we highlighted the top overall data from the position players in our Data Dive article. Today, we shift the focus to the mound, breaking down the top TrackMan pitching metrics recorded during live outings at the 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.