This past Tuesday, May 21, the Prep Baseball Illinois hosted the Illinois Rising Stars Games at Triton JC in River Grove, Illinois. The event was for those in the class of 2028 and class of 2029, serving as an early opportunity to experience a showcase and be seen by PBR staff.

The event will help identify invitations for the invite-only Junior Future Games in July, which run in conjunction with Prep Baseball’s prestigious Future Games. The Future Games Event, an annual event featuring players entering their junior and senior years, is among the most scouted events in the country, attracting more than 300 college coaches each year.

Below are the day’s top performers, broken down by position players and pitchers. To see a list of those that attended, click here. For all of the statistics from this event, click here.

POSITIONAL TOOLS

TOP 60-TIMES

MAX INF VELOCITY

MAX OF VELOCITY

MAX C VELOCITY

POP POP-TIMES

TRACKMAN

We'll continue to roll out the data we gathered from this event, starting with the analytics we have at our disposal from our TrackMan units. Below we'll look at which players had noteworthy batted ball and pitch data.

MAX FASTBALL VELOCITY & SPIN RATE

Max Fastball Velocity: This metric calculates the speed of the pitch as it’s released from the pitcher’s hand.

Spin Rate: This metric calculates the rate of spin on the baseball as it leaves the pitcher’s hand, measured in revolutions per minute (rpm). Historical data shows that high-spin fastballs lessen the impact of gravity, allowing for more ‘rise’ (or less fall, in other words) as it carries through the zone. Low-spin fastballs typically indicate the pitch has greater horizontal action, often making it tougher to square up, but generally easier to make contact with, leading to more ground balls, while high-spin fastballs show a correlation with swings and misses.

AVERAGE FASTBALL HORIZONTAL MOVEMENT

Horizontal Break: Outlined on TrackMan’s own website: “... horizontal movement is measured in inches between where the pitch actually crosses the front of home plate side-wise, and where it would have crossed home plate side-wise if had it traveled in a perfectly straight line from release. A positive number means the break was to the right from the pitcher’s perspective, while a negative number means the break was to the left from the pitcher’s perspective.”

AVERAGE CURVEBALL & SLIDER SPIN RATE

AVERAGE CHANGEUP HORIZONTAL MOVEMENT

MAX AND AVERAGE EXIT VELOCITY (HITTING)

MAX DISTANCE (HITTING)

SWEET SPOT PERCENTAGE (HITTING)

Sweet Spot percentage: This metric is determined by how often the player produces a batted ball during the session with a launch angle between 8 to 32 degrees.

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