Right after the trade deadline, it was clear that the Yankees were heavily interested in pitchers with a specific type of sinker. I wrote about how Clay Holmes and Joely Rodríguez’s sinkers had similar qualities, particularly the deviation in observed and spin-based movement. With the growing reliability on Hawk-Eye data, teams can gather information on inferred and actual spin axis data. The old tracking system, Trackman, was limited to inferring the spin of the baseball, leaving some questions about what some pitch models were missing in pitchers like Kyle Hendricks or Marcus Stroman.
Since the official deployment of Hawk-Eye in 2020, the Yanks and other teams have clearly aspired to harness the data for a competitive advantage.