Cole Sulser Discusses Pitch Design and the Properties of Seam Shift

Eric Canha-Imagn Images Cole Sulser has a future as a pitching coach — or coordinator — if he chooses to go that route. A graduate of Dartmouth College with a degree in Engineering Sciences, the 36-year-old right-hander has not only toed the rubber for five major league teams, but also his current club is the ever-progressive Tampa Bay Rays. As much as any hurler in the game, Sulser is well-versed in his craft. His pitching education predates his July 2024 arrival in St. Petersburg. Ditto his providing insights here at FanGraphs. Then a Baltimore Oriole, Sulser shared thoughts on changeup development, and later on pitch design, in pieces that ran in August 2021. In want of further perspectives from the analytically savvy hurler, I caught up with him when the Rays visited Fenway Park this past weekend. ——— David Laurila: How much has pitch design grown since we spoke five years ago?” Cole Sulser: “I think it has grown a ton. Our understanding is a lot more comprehensive than it was five years ago. Certain teams were maybe ahead of it more than others, but it was definitely a little more surface level. We were looking at some of the more generic aspects in terms of overall spin rate, and maybe just a little bit of efficiency. Now it seems like teams have gotten a lot more in depth in terms of the gyro degree, what your body naturally does, and which pitches may complement that. Instead of searching for specific pitches, they are more looking at what you do naturally, and try to complement that with pitches that would come easier to you.” Laurila: Has that impacted you specifically? You Aren't a FanGraphs Member It looks like you aren't yet a FanGraphs Member (or aren't logged in). We aren't mad, just disappointed. We get it. You want to read this article. But before we let you get back to it, we'd like to point out a few of the good reasons why you should become a Member. 1. Ad Free viewing! We won't bug you with this ad, or any other. 2. Unlimited articles! Non-Members only get to read 10 free articles a month. Members never get cut off. 3. Dark mode and Classic mode! 4. Custom player page dashboards! Choose the player cards you want, in the order you want them. 5. One-click data exports! Export our projections and leaderboards for your personal projects. 6. Remove the photos on the home page! (Honestly, this doesn't sound so great to us, but some people wanted it, and we like to give our Members what they want.) 7. Even more Steamer projections! We have handedness, percentile, and context neutral projections available for Members only. 8. Get FanGraphs Walk-Off, a customized year end review! Find out exactly how you used FanGraphs this year, and how that compares to other Members. Don't be a victim of FOMO. 9. A weekly mailbag column, exclusively for Members. 10. Help support FanGraphs and our entire staff! Our Members provide us with critical resources to improve the site and deliver new features! We hope you'll consider a Membership today, for yourself or as a gift! And we realize this has been an awfully long sales pitch, so we've also removed all the other ads in this article. We didn't want to overdo it. Sulser: “It has a little bit. It’s helped with my cutter, because I tend to stay behind the ball a lot easier than I do getting overly supinated and way in front of the ball. Depth-y breaking balls would be harder for me to chase. Even though that might be a great analytic pitch, and would be awesome to have, it would be a much harder pitch for me to be able to chase that design. Something like a hard gyro, or a cutter, would come more naturally to how my body operates and how I throw a ball.” Laurila: Had you previously chased things that didn’t mesh with what came more naturally? Sulser: “Sure. You see guys out there who have a nasty pitch and can be like, ‘Oh, man. I want to throw that, as well.’ But you can end up wasting time trying to chase these things. It might come really easily for that guy, but for you it might be a struggle. And even if you are able to achieve it, it might actually come as a detriment to your other pitches, because you start getting out of your normal mechanics and arm action to chase a certain movement. So, the increase in analytics, and our increase in understanding how pitches are designed and thrown, has helped guys refine their pitches to more maximize their specific abilities.” Laurila: Is there anything that, five years ago, was maybe overemphasized in terms of importance? Sulser: “This might be before five years ago, but everyone was all about spin rate. That was a big thing. We have since come to understand that spin rate isn’t as much of a factor as the actual movement you’re producing with it. If you’re producing a high spin rate but not much spin efficiency, that’s not going to help you very much. Again, our depth of understanding is much better. Those pieces weren’t wrong, it’s more so the understanding that there is more than one factor.” Laurila: Arm slots, approach angles, release points… Sulser: “Those are huge ones. Certain movement from one arm slot, say a straight over-the-top delivery; getting similar analytics from a low slot might play differently, and be either more valued or less valued. Not all movement is the same. Achieving movement from different arm slots can yield different kinds of values. “A lot of that is innate, and that’s where I think our understanding has gotten better. Pitches that match your arm slot — or have kind of a grading system so that when we’re looking at a pitch specifically — we can give it a true evaluation. We’re not just comparing it to a league average. That’s something where we’ve gotten ahead of by leaps and bounds. We’re not just having to test something and say, ‘Well, does it work or not?’ and then needing a larger sample size to figure that out. The speed of how guys can make adjustments is a lot quicker now.” Laurila: How much do guys tinker with seams in bullpen sessions? Sulser: “All the time. It used to be trial and error, kind of ‘I liked that movement,’ whereas now we have a better understanding of how well it should actually play. Maybe it needs some more tinkering. Again, we can do things quicker, and with a lot more certainty that something should translate to on-field results.” Laurila: Have you changed the seam orientation on any of your pitches? Sulser: “I have. I’ve changed the seam orientation on my changeup, even though it had been one of my better pitches. I changed it to have a little more consistent depth. I’ve changed the seam orientation on my cutter for similar reasons, to get a more consistent shape. I’ve definitely been tinkering. One reason is that you may not be throwing the same at 35 as you did at 25.” Laurila: Seam shift and seam-shifted wake are terms that have become increasingly common, yet many people don’t fully understand what they mean. How would you explain them? Sulser: “Guys were originally looking at creating movement on pitches based only on spin. For instance, getting sideways spin to get a slider to move. But then we figured out more about seam shift. Seam shift is the aerodynamics of the baseball itself. The seams create spots where the air doesn’t travel as smoothly over the ball. That creates movement that the spin isn’t creating, but rather it is the aerodynamics of the ball that are creating it. If you can use aerodynamics to make certain pitches move, that is a huge benefit.” Laurila: Is your changeup a seam shift? Sulser: “It is.” Laurila: And how exactly do you create a seam-shift effect? Sulser: “Originally, it was kind of by luck. Over the course of my understanding, I know that you don’t try to chase what you thought was creating the movement. With seam shift, you can actually stay truly behind the ball, or even cut it a little bit, and, again, the aerodynamics create the movement. “You’re looking for a place that doesn’t have to be super specific in terms of finger placement. What you want is for the ball to come off with a certain amount of gyro degree or inefficiency. When you get the pitch to come off with that inefficiency… basically, you line up the spots on the ball where the seams are in order to get more smooth surface in certain areas. That helps the pitch move a certain way. On a seam-shift changeup, or a seam-shift sinker, you’re trying to get a nice smooth spot on the top left side of the ball. For me, as a right-handed pitcher, it would be at 11 o’clock. I’m trying to get the ball to come off of my hand with a nice smooth piece of baseball at 11 o’clock. And I want an inefficiency that is going be around 30 degrees gyro. That should create a seam-shift pitch.”