Blake Treinen and Seam-Shifted Wake

Seam-shifted wake has become one of the buzzier terms in baseball in recent years due to discoveries by the effect's godfather, Barton Smith. But the complexity of the topic has muddled the public reception of an incredibly important concept MLB teams are presently using to gain an advantage over hitters.

My argument is that what the public needs to appreciate this topic more is a focus on the seam orientation of the ball upon release, rather than a focus on what the aerodynamics of the concept mean.

The former is intuitive and at the end of the day, is what MLB coaches are focused on communicating to their players too. It's the primary input that results in the ball moving late or unexpectedly on its way to the plate. The latter will only ever be fully understood by 1-5% of the baseball community.

A great example of this is the seam orientation change Blake Treinen made on his slider between 2020 and 2021. While we on the public side of things have very few, if any, images or video of seam orientation changes, this Treinen example I found gives us a glimpse of how seam orientation changes can influence the flight of sliders and other breaking balls via seam-shifted wakes / seam effects.

And Treinen's 2021 orientation in particular, a two-seam orientation, is a common one used to induced a slider with a lot of horizontal movement. This pitch has recently been termed the "Sweeper" given its growing presence in baseball.

This topic is incredibly complex, and I will admit, this video was in part an exercise in trying to explain it on video in as reduced a form as possible. With that in mind, there's a strong chance some information within lacks sufficient context or needs further explanation.

As a result, there's likely obvious comments and counters to some of the points I make. I'm confident that I have at least thought about most of these and on many occasions chose to leave them out of this video for the sake of simplicity.

But if any of the information inside you believe to be incorrect, or misleading, please let me know in the comments below or on Twitter, as the point of this channel is for me to refine my ability to explain some of baseball's most advanced topics to the general baseball fan. The more critical feedback I get, the quicker I believe I'll improve.

Follow me on Twitter: @LanceBroz
Follow Nathaniel Plotts on Twitter as well @NPlotts5

Treinen Photo: USA Today
Music: BenSound.com

0:00 Intro
1:34 What is Seam-Shifted Wake / Seam Effects?
4:28 The Mystery of Savant's Spin Direction Charts
6:13 Blake Treinen's Two-Seam Slider
8:52 Outro