LAKELAND, Fla. — Warning: The following column contains glancing references to math and physics.
Yeah, I know. Math makes my head hurt. But this is fun science — the kind that explains why a fastball can dance like a wiffle ball.
But we are going to explore it through the one person who can explain it in a fun, completely relatable way.
“Now, I’m pitching from my ass,” Detroit Tigers left-hander Tyler Alexander says.
Oh, Alexander. My man has a wonderful way with words.
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But that’s getting ahead in the story.
Let’s start at the beginning.
At the end of the 2022 season, the Tigers gave Alexander a specific request: We want you to increase your average fastball 1 mph.
Hmm. OK. That didn’t seem unreasonable.
The past few seasons have brought a lot of updates to the science of baseball — and how the Tigers have increased their reliance on biomechanics and statistical analysis, pumping more resources into that side of the organization.
But this is a story about how it actually plays out for the players — and the surprising benefits that come from it.
Even if the players don’t understand all of it.
Finding more velo
Alexander’s fastball averaged 90.4 mph in 2022; the Tigers want to increase that to 91.4 mph this season.
“They think, analytically, all my stuff will play better if my fastball is faster,” he said. “You wouldn’t think it, but it’s hard to throw 1 mph faster. For a guy who has thrown 88-92 since I was 15, that’s a lot for me.”
So, where can Alexander find that 1 mph?
That’s actually far more complicated than it sounds. It’s not simply a matter of throwing harder. Or grunting louder.
To get a tick faster, he had to totally revamp his technique. Instead of generating power from his quadriceps — the muscles in the front of the leg — he became, for lack of a better term, a butt thrower.
Seriously.
“I was quad-dominant,” he said. “I kind of got up on my toes a little bit as I would drive to the plate. Now, I’m working more on pushing from my heel. And then as a result of that, keeping my front leg a little more stable when I land.”
In layman’s terms, now, he’s using more of his butt muscles, which are bigger and more powerful than the quad muscles.
“If you watch me throw, to me, it’s very obvious because it’s a whole different feel,” he said.
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Yes, the Tigers have a plan
Not all teams know how to turn their analytics into a plan, asking veterans to alter techniques.
Just having the numbers, after all, doesn’t do anything.
In January, after left-hander Chasen Shreve signed a minor league deal with the Tigers, with an invitation to major league spring training, he met with Hinch and pitching coach Chris Fetter.
“We were talking about analytics and what they want me to do,” he said.
And he found it so refreshing.
“I’ve never really been on a team that told me how to use my analytical numbers,” he said. “Nobody’s really ever been like, ‘Hey, this is what we think you should throw your fastball, your splitter and in what counts.”
This is a guy who has nine MLB seasons behind him, as part of five organizations.
“On the teams I’ve been on, nobody has ever been like, OK, this is analytically what we see and this is how you should pitch,” he said. “Nobody’s ever said that to me until I got here. In our meeting, they were telling me what they thought, and I told them what I thought, and we were bouncing ideas off each other and I was like, ‘I’ve never done this, like, with a team before.’ ”
He found it refreshing and encouraging.
When he was playing for the Pittsburgh Pirates in 2021, he was shown something that looked like a heat map.
“They showed me, this is where damage is not done,” he said. “But it was kind of basically everywhere but the middle of the strike zone. I was like, ‘OK, I’m not trying to throw it down the middle ever. So that doesn’t really help me, but OK.’ So yeah, it’s been great so far.”
The Tigers are also trying to get him to throw a little faster.
“They see my fastball playing best at 92-93,” he said.
But he’s finding that extra tick faster in a different way than Alexander.
“We’re just changing my leg action,” he said. “Try to just get more torque and more rotation. The year I did that, the hardest I’ve thrown in my career, I was at 92.8 mph in 2017 with the Yankees.”
A positive side effect
So Alexander made the changes, and now he’s finding a surprising byproduct.
He has a cleaner approach. He has less soreness. He is recovering faster. His offspeed pitches have improved. And he has slightly more rise on his fastball.
“A cool little result is, it’s been easier to throw my offspeed pitches,” he said. “It’s easier for me to throw my cutter and my slider is a little bit better because of it. So that just sort of came along with it.”
If he can maintain that form, that could prevent injuries and give him a better chance to succeed.
“I feel great, healthier than last year,” he said. “I think I’m more prepared for the season this year than I was last year.”
He expects his velocity to tick up after he gets more comfortable with the new mechanics.
“It’s weird at first,” he said. “But when you throw like that every day, it starts to become a habit.”
‘Seam-shifted?’ What the heck is that?
“Just so I’m clear,” I said to Alexander. “We are hearing about all the analytics and biomechanics with the Tigers. Is this a direct reflection of that?”
“No doubt,” Alexander said. “We have more tools to help us improve, different ways, with all the analytics and the new coaching staff we brought in. We hired a new pitching coach. We have all types of people in the analytics department that are here to help us. It’s different in a good way. It’s a different way to improve. My whole life, it’s feel. Hey, how do you make your slider better? Well, feel this, and now it’s like, seam-shifted wake.”
“What?” I asked.
“Yeah, exactly,” he said.
“What is that?” I asked.
“I don’t know if I’m the right person to ask,” Alexander said. “It’s the thought process of making the ball spin one way to make it go a different way.”
He looked at Mason Englert, at a nearby locker, and asked him to explain it.
“Are we talking slider, changeup, sinker, what?” Englert asked.
“Let’s talk sinker,” Alexander said.
“It’s putting the seam on the boundary layer, so where the air separates off the ball on one side to create different pressure and make the ball move different than the direction it’s spinning,” Englert said.
I was following along until …
“In a traditional fastball, if you spin it directly backwards, working towards 12, a four-seam magnus force is the only thing that makes it move up, so it’s going to move up towards noon,” Englert said. “If you take that same fastball, like a two-seam orientation, and open the ball up further, the air separates off the ball on, say, like a righty’s. … Then that’s going to add an extra force vector that’s pushing to the right, like 90 degrees of where it’s been. That’s what makes it run, not because you spun it more sideways.”
OK. So he lost me somewhere between magnus force and vector.
Alexander bent over and spoke into my tape recorder: “That’s Mason Englert, people!”
“And you got your physics degree from?” I asked.
“Robin Lund University,” he replied, smiling.
Lund is a new assistant pitching coach for the Tigers; before his hiring, he was Iowa’s pitching coach, and before that, he earned a doctorate in exercise science.
“OK, my head hurts,” I said.
“Yeah, it’s a lot,” Alexander said. “It’s a lot.”
He smiled.
“If you can take all that information that makes no sense, right?” he said. “If you can take bits and pieces of that to fit you, then you’re good. For me, ‘seam-shifted wake’ hasn’t quite worked yet.”
“When did you hear that for the first time?” I asked.
“Last year,” he said. “You look at guys with huge bowling-ball sinkers, guys like Jason Foley. You watch them on TV and you see these sinkers that are moving ridiculous. And you’re like how the heck do I do that? Well, those are the guys that just naturally seam-shift. They’ve done it their whole life. And so now, people are trying to figure out how to be able to do that.”
A top-secret laboratory
Scott Harris, the Tigers’ president of baseball operations hired in October, has hinted about the franchise’s increased focus on science and technology, but he offers no specifics.
“We’re throwing a lot of new stuff at them — new coaches, new systems, new development concepts, new tools to help them get better,” Harris said.
“What’s the best example of something new that you think will be particularly helpful?” he was asked.
Suddenly, Harris got as evasive as an NFL executive around draft time.
“I don’t know if I can comment,” Harris said. “We are taking a proactive approach to identifying the shapes that work best for our pitchers, how their bodies move, and making sure that they’re attacking hitters, both in the zone and with their best weapons.”
Personally, that got my mind racing, trying to imagine the Tigers’ top-secret pitching laboratory. I imagined scientists in white coats, holding clipboards and looking at these pitchers like mad scientists — studying numbers, tweaking things, trying to find a teensy way to make them improve.
They are all using phrases like seam-shifted and vector and magnus force.
Can’t say I understand it all.
To be honest, Alexander doesn’t understand it all either. And he doesn’t have to. As long as he can implement some of the plans devised by those mad scientists. From Lund University. Or The School of Fetter.
So, Alexander is throwing from his butt now — that he can understand. There might be a lot of science to explain it, a lot of scientists and analysts behind it, but all that matters is this:
He’s seeing positive results. It seems to be working.
And for once, it feels as if the Tigers have entered a new age.
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Contact Jeff Seidel at jseidel@freepress.com or follow him on Twitter @seideljeff.
To read Seidel’s recent columns, go to freep.com/sports/jeff-seidel.