Topspin Phenomenon

[baseballsim]

All year long there's been talk on the internet and social media about the certain hitters having a topspin in their swing. If a player has a one handed follow through, they will generate top spin hits. If a player has a two handed follow through, they will not hit with top spin and instead more like back spin.

Guys like Miguel Cabrera, Ken Griffey Jr, and Cal Ripken are supposed to have topspin swings and Corey Seager does not have topspin.

I found it interesting that I was not able to find one post about this in the main forum yet it's pretty much a daily topic on TSN and Reddit. My understanding is that this affects those who play against the CPU and online h2h. Has anyone here ever experienced this phenomenon?

VIDEO: Reggie Jackson with 2 handed follow through and Will Clark with one handed follow through (and topspin). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1A4...ature=youtu.be

[bukktown]

Re: Topspin Phenomenon

I remember a theory going around Reddit last summer that the guys with high contact and high power would get the topspin, whereas high power with medium or low contact rating wouldn't.

[jsou4646]

Re: Topspin Phenomenon

I have noticed this a lot as well. The hitting this year is off. Add the pci being almost dead on in a lot of intansces and it creating a lazy fly ball on more occasions than it should really drives me nuts. The game does a lot of good things but hitting this year is somewhat of a crap shoot. Mlb 13 on the ps3 has the best pci to hit type in the series. I’d know as soon as contact was made on how good the ball would be struck. Also the crack of the bat in 17 is weak. In 13 i could also tell wether it was a solid hit due to the crack of the back, and if it was a flair into the outfield the sound would correspond to that as well. In 17 it’s just a faint crack, like weak contact.

[Syce]

Re: Topspin Phenomenon

I have noticed this a lot as well. The hitting this year is off. Add the pci being almost dead on in a lot of intansces and it creating a lazy fly ball on more occasions than it should really drives me nuts. The game does a lot of good things but hitting this year is somewhat of a crap shoot. Mlb 13 on the ps3 has the best pci to hit type in the series. I’d know as soon as contact was made on how good the ball would be struck. Also the crack of the bat in 17 is weak. In 13 i could also tell wether it was a solid hit due to the crack of the back, and if it was a flair into the outfield the sound would correspond to that as well. In 17 it’s just a faint crack, like weak contact.

well they did mention they have made significant changes to hitting for mlb the show 18, when they were announcing the alpha server test a week or so ago.

[Blzer]

Re: Topspin Phenomenon

Last year when playing HRD, I knew there was something funny with some players having more TS than other players. I was trying to crack down the reason, but never could (I was thinking lefty vs. righty stuff like from MVP 2004).

You may be onto something here.

[Blzer]

Re: Topspin Phenomenon

Do none of you actually watch/play real baseball? It’s BACKSPIN!!

Topspin is bad!

Yes, yes I do and yes it is.

Hope you're not calling me out on this one. There are some hitters in HRD that hit with top spin more than others though, yet I didn't actually know why.

[Caulfield]

Re: Topspin Phenomenon

All I know is hitting a ball with backspin is a real and repeatable skill. In tennis.
But can a batter hit a ball with intentional backspin. And still hit at least .200? That I dont know.

[Blzer]

Re: Topspin Phenomenon

All I know is hitting a ball with backspin is a real and repeatable skill. In tennis.
But can a batter hit a ball with intentional backspin. And still hit at least .200? That I dont know.

Spin type is really just determined by one thing: placement of ball on bat. If you hit the bottom half of a ball, you will produce backspin. If you hit the upper half of a ball, you will produce topspin. The placement in itself is mostly influenced by: swing plane, timing of swing, height of pitch.

You can also hook or slice a ball if you hit more of the "side" of the ball, which of course can occur from an angled swing as it crosses the plate (which most everybody does. It is extremely uncommon for somebody's bat to actually run parallel with the ground upon contact unless the pitch is shoulder-height, in which case unless you're Hunter Pence you're probably not swinging at that pitch anyway). This is also why you barely see any balls hit in the air to the opposite field with topspin; you would literally have to get over the ball and create lift whilst still getting that angle, which means an early enough swing, a flat enough bat, and an upper enough cut.

Anyway, to answer your question, hitters can mostly reproduce the hit type they so desire, but it also depends on things like what kind of pitch somebody is throwing and the location of the pitch. It'll be easier to do in batting practice, and much easier by self-tossing or placing a ball on a tee. Indeed, some players produce backspin more often than others, and same for topspin. From the Giants alone, Brandon Belt and Buster Posey hit with topspin more often than Hunter Pence and Joe Panik, who hit with backspin more often.

To answer the other part of your question, in my humble opinion the most success from a player comes with hitting line drives with backspin or squared up. It can clear the infield by hitting past or over them, it can clear the outfield by hitting under, over or past them, and it can clear a fence. Also, you provide yourself the greatest window of opportunity for contact on that kind of swing because your swing plane is close or identical to the ball's plane coming at you. This is only my opinion though, and the modern hitter is trying to get more uppercut on their swing because their idea of success is more home runs, even at the cost of more strikeouts. At that point, it's a philosophy question... but if you can fine-tune it and know how to feel it out, you can possibly be very successful with it.

In real life, here is an easy way to know if someone hit with backspin or topspin (and I teach this to my softball players, specifically my outfielders): watch the swing plane with the ball-off-contact plane. If the ball off contact angles higher than the player's swing/follow-through on contact, they have hit with backspin. Likewise, if the ball off contact angles lower than the player's swing/follow-through on contact, they have hit with topspin (this includes the majority of ground balls as well, but let's assume the ball is hit somewhere in the air for now). I just made two slow-mo gifs of actual home run balls hit with topspin.

Spoiler

Note that if you hit a ball with too much extreme top spin, you simply aren't going to hit it out. The magnus forces would be far too strong to keep the ball up in the air that long and for that much distance, so what you are seeing here won't appear too extreme as far as swinging at a greater angle than that of the ball taking off, but it's just enough. And just to clarify in case I hadn't implied it already, the majority of home runs are hit with backspin (I'd say over 95% of them).

* All of this is assuming the ball is put in play. If you swing under a pitch that is fouled straight back, it is going to be top-spinned to the stands.

[underdog13]

Re: Topspin Phenomenon

"My understanding is that this affects those who play against the CPU and online h2h"

While I'm not saying there is or isn't topspin programmed to certain swings, I will say that if they programmed it into swings it will appear in all modes not a select few.

Also most theories from Tsn and reddit tend to be horse ****.

Sent from my XT1585 using Tapatalk

[jsou4646]

Re: Topspin Phenomenon

"My understanding is that this affects those who play against the CPU and online h2h"

While I'm not saying there is or isn't topspin programmed to certain swings, I will say that if they programmed it into swings it will appear in all modes not a select few.

Also most theories from Tsn and reddit tend to be horse ****.

Sent from my XT1585 using Tapatalk

I know Matt kemp has horrible top spin in his stance. I play on legend and I’ve looked into my power numbers from the last two seasons and both years my top two home run hitter both had 2 banded follow throughs. Neither one had the highest hitting or home run ability on my team. I’ll defiantly need to test the theory more, but something is off about the hitting this year.

[nomo17k]

Re: Topspin Phenomenon

I don't know if it is top spin in a stricter physical sense, but the ball physics in MLB 17 does have a kind of line-drive hit that's distinctly different from (more typical) fly balls with back spin.

Typically you can distinguish between top and back spins by their hand time... if it doesn't have a long hand time and the trajectory looks as if the batted ball "dives," then it has more top spin component in its ball.

I don't think I've captured any videos but when I do, I tend to hit them to the center. I think that's a kind of hit type I've seen for the first time in MLB 17.

But I don't think the game has the notion of the ability as part of player's skill, i.e., any in-game player can hit them by making certain kind of contact against certain pitch.