New pitching lab helping FSU baseball keep up in analytics-driven age

On its face, Florida State baseball's new pitching lab doesn't look especially impressive.

It's just a converted lane in what used to be one of the Seminoles' batting cages with cameras and various pieces of technology set up around a turf mound.

Despite this inauspicious appearance, the pitching lab is being viewed as a game-changer for the FSU pitching staff, something that should help the Seminoles keep up with the times technology-wise in new pitching coach Micah Posey's first season guiding the staff.

FSU permitted the Osceola to observe an afternoon of throwing sessions in the pitching lab last week, providing an up-close look at the many ways that this technology update can be both an immediate and long-term aid for the Seminoles' pitching staff.

"It's really a neat space," FSU head coach Link Jarrett said of the new pitching lab. "It's not the only pitching development area that we have, but now that we do have it, it's just fascinating to see the details you can pull out of that information."

Even before Posey arrived on campus, Jarrett had the idea in mind of creating a pitching lab at FSU. Wake Forest's pitching lab has drawn quite a bit of attention over the last few seasons and helped lead the Demon Deacons to a No. 1 ranking for much of the 2023 season and a run all the way to the College World Series semifinals.

These in-depth pitching practice setups are becoming more and more of the norm in high-level college baseball, so Jarrett wanted to ensure he was giving his pitchers every possible advantage.

FSU has had Trackman technology for a number of years now. However, it was only used previously in pitching settings on the field at Dick Howser Stadium and not really in off-field throwing sessions.

Posey, who extensively used the technology at his previous school, Dallas Baptist, and new pitching/catching quality control analyst Rob Collison, who previously worked as a coaching apprentice in the Houston Astros' organization, have helped the Seminoles get the most out of Trackman this offseason.

Collison says FSU's pitching lab setup is quite similar to the one the Astros used during his time with the organization.

When throwing in the pitching lab, there's a television screen displaying all the Trackman information. Seconds after a pitch is thrown, it shows everything from the more basic information like speed, ball movement, location relative to the strike zone to the much more complex information such as spin tilt, revolutions per minute and efficiency of spin.

Posey would call a pitch and location out to the pitcher. If executed properly, they would move on. If something was off with it, he could instantly point to the Trackman graphic to use statistical evidence to back up why that pitch didn't not move as well or in the direction intended.

"It gives them confidence in what's good, but it also assures them of what's not good and what needs to get better..." Posey told the Osceola. "I think it just gives guys a better feel with where they're at and it takes kind of the guesswork out of it."

Posey also knows how to keep things light during these pitching lab sessions, with analogies about what quality of fast-food hamburger the pitch they just threw was and by challenging his pitchers to hit exact speeds.

One pitcher was challenged to throw a 91.5 mile-per-hour fastball and clocked it at 91.4.

Some FSU pitchers don't get access to the live feedback as Posey has realized it distracts them too much. Even in these cases, though, the data is being tracked and can be looked back at pitch-by-pitch after the session ends.

Additionally, the pitching lab has an Edgertronic camera located just behind the pitcher and focused on where their hand releases that shows in extremely slow motion how the pitcher's release works.

Depending on the pitch being thrown, is the correct finger the last one touching the ball or is the wrong finger causing issues? Historically, coaches have relied much more on guesswork here without access to these slow-motion cameras.

"Taking it out on the field in competition is ultimately where this has to go," Jarrett said. "But you would be hard-pressed to pull any sort of information of that magnitude out of your basic cameras and the things that we were accustomed to in the game for so long."

FSU's 5.75 team earned run average in 2023 stands alone as the worst in program history, more than a full run per nine innings more than the next closest FSU team. That being said, pitching hasn't really been a strength of the Seminoles for awhile.

Over the last nine full seasons, FSU has ranked in the top 25 nationally in ERA just once (3.45 ERA in 2021 ranked seventh). This has certainly played a role in why FSU has not hosted an NCAA Regional since 2018, failing to do so in each of the last four seasons.

That's FSU's longest streak without hosting an NCAA Regional since the format began in the 1970s.

Junior pitcher Conner Whittaker never really considered himself much of an analytics guy before this offseason. That has changed as he's grown more familiar with the technology while learning under someone experienced in the area like Posey.

"It's made a huge difference for myself..." Whittaker told the Osceola about the pitching lab. "Once you throw a pitch and that (graphic) pops up, Posey has really done a good job explaining everything, making sure we understand what it says, what it means, what each pitch should look like number-wise. I think we all have a good sense of what it means and what it should look like."

For Whittaker, the biggest difference he's noticed is paying attention to the line graph on Trackman, which measures the horizontal movement of pitches as well as the vertical approach.

"I think last year I kind of struggled with not moving the right way to get hitters to chase," Whittaker said. "Now seeing the numbers, everything is right there if you make slight adjustments."

Whittaker has thrown 115.1 innings over the last two seasons with the Seminoles, doing so for two different pitching coaches and with a 3.75 career ERA. Entering his critical junior season, Whittaker has valued the lessons he's learned already from his third pitching coach at FSU as well as the pitching lab itself.

"When I look at Coach Posey, he's a professional. That's how I look at him. He's really smart and he knows exactly what he's talking about," Whittaker said of Posey. "He's able to say different things to each player and help them individually, but also create a bond between us pitchers, make us want to pitch for each other. He understands what everything means, how to be a professional, the way it should look."

The uses for the technology extend far beyond analysis of pitchers' throwing sessions in the lab.

After throwing in scrimmages or games, FSU pitchers get an after-action report sent to them. This intensive document details every pitch of their outing, where they located the ball in certain counts and what was working for them particularly well that day.

"It helps them pitch with conviction in what makes them different and what makes them unique and what makes them an outlier. Those pitches, what makes them good? And then we're gonna take those good traits and we're gonna throw them as much as possible," Posey said. "So maybe there's a pitch that is not as good metricly, I don't have to sell them on that. They know, 'Ok, it's not good.' That way, when it's not being thrown a lot in the game, there are no complaints and gripes, 'Why aren't we throwing this pitch more?' For those guys, it tells them what they're good at and it allows us to do what they're good at more, if that makes sense."

Through the Trackman Share technology, which all teams can elect to sign up for, FSU's data from practice sessions and games is available for other teams to look at. In turn, however, FSU is also able to view Trackman data for all other teams who have joined Trackman Share.

This gives FSU's batters an idea of what they'll be facing against certain pitchers on opposing teams they'll face in the near future. It's also backwards-compatible, meaning Posey can pull up data from certain past pitchers to show what was so effective about their pitches and how that can translate to current FSU arms.

Posey shared he's used that feature some this offseason looking at former LSU pitcher Paul Skenes, the No. 1 overall pick in last year's MLB Draft, and what makes his slider so remarkably effective.

"We can show them, 'Hey, last year, Skenes, this is what his slider looked like and you want to try to emulate it,' " Posey said.

FSU's pitching staff would seem to be in much better shape entering the 2024 season than Jarrett's first season atop the program. The Seminoles snowballed last year after Wyatt Crowell's season-ending injury, missing the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 1977.

To bolster that depth, FSU brought in four D-I transfer pitchers and three junior-college transfer arms as well. This should give Posey a much more versatile and deep array of arms to use in his first season back in his native Tallahassee.

Posey arrives at FSU as the reigning Conference USA Assistant Coach of the Year. DBU set new program records in each of his three seasons there for strikeouts per nine innings and four DBU pitchers made the All-Conference USA team last season.

But FSU's new pitching lab will be quite an aid for him as well, helping level the playing field technologically as baseball analytics continue to evolve.

"There's so much information hidden in the modern-day metrics of the spin, the vertical approach angle, the release height, the extension. And then when you start to pull the super-slow-mo imagery down of what this thing looks like coming out of somebody's hand..." Jarrett said. "Being able to look at that, you can't put a pricetag on it."

When: Friday, 5 p.m.; Saturday, 2 p.m.; Sunday, noon

Where: Dick Howser Stadium

TV: ACC Network Extra