Player Spotlight: Eli Yamanaka
February 26, 2021
Today, we take a peek at Eli Yamanaka’s Trackman performance from the recently held Northwest Pre-Season Invite: for full event stats, click here. Yamanaka, a 2022 out of Waiakea High School in Hawaii, served up a solid bullpen session to delve into.
While throwing from a low-mid ¾ arm slot, Yamanaka throws a pretty heavy fastball as seen by the lower spin rate and topping out at 83mph. A heavy fastball prevents hitters from feeling comfortable with contact. Sometimes, even what should be solid contact will feel like hitting a bowling ball. He does create a great spin axis on his fastball to maximize the lower spin level to generate a respectable amount of arm-side run,15.5in on average with a max of 17in. Pairing the two factors makes for a good starting point for an arsenal. His other offerings, slider and changeup, work more out of the east-west plane as well. As seen by the arsenal chart below, the change has almost the exact same movement profile as the fastball but with a significant decrease in velocity, roughly 10-11 mph off the fastball. This combined with a similar spin axis and arm slot will provide a good deal of deception depending on location. One last little wrinkle Yamanaka will throw is a slider which has a good amount of horizontal movement in the other direction. With an average of 23 in of horizontal separation from the fastball, -7.6 in of horizontal break by itself, it’s a great tool to keep hitters off of the fastball-changeup combo. Provided he can locate with his pitches, these tools will definitely keep hitters off balance.
