I bought my first pitchLogic baseball in March of 2020.  As a pitching coach that works with over 40 players from age 8 all the way up to pro ball guys, I am constantly looking for ways to improve instruction.  My professional career ended 10 years ago, and man has the game changed since then!  Spin data is now an accepted part of the game, so I knew I had to dive in and learn. 

Now this article is focused more on the durability of a pitchLogic baseball, so let’s jump to that.  It is now May of 2021 and my original pitchLogic baseball (named “The Dinosaur” by some of my kids) still works and reads like a champ.  Don’t get me wrong, I have a newer pitchLogic ball with fresh leather on it that I use for a majority of my lessons… but there is quite a bit of a sentimental connection between myself and the original ball.  As a coach, one of my favorite things about the pitchLogic baseball is its versatility.  It can be thrown to a catcher, into a net, and you can even long toss with it.  None of which have negatively affected the longevity of the baseball’s lifespan.

One day I was working with one of my younger pitchers and I had an idea.  Let’s throw a few pitches with “The Dinosaur” and then throw a few pitches with the new ball and compare the metrics.  After getting home and crunching the numbers, I was blown away!  Now understand this was a spontaneous idea, so the sample size was small.  Six pitches with the old ball and six with the new ball.  Here were the results:

Speed -           Old ball avg: 53.72   New ball avg: 53.91

Total spin -     Old ball avg: 1,226   New ball avg: 1,262

While the velocity readings were impressive, I was more impressed with the consistency of the total spin.  This led me to wanting more.  Two weeks later I brought a few high school kids out for bullpens with the goal of running a more in depth comparison between the The Dinosaur and the newer ball.  The test was set up like this:

Each pitcher would throw 12 fastballs followed by 6 breaking balls (of their choice).  My old pitch logic ball was connected to the pitchLogic app on my cell phone while the newer ball was connected to my iPad.  Every 2 pitches we would switch between the old ball and the new ball.  This time I added the movement numbers to the comparison.  Here were the results:

Pretty astonishing! While the leather on “The Dinosaur” is beaten and battered due to thousands of pitches outdoors in the elements, the data is still spot on when comparing to the newer ball.  I guess I can keep the old beast around for a little while longer!