The San Jose Mercury News reports on physicist Samantha Schultz's position as a pitching analyst with the Oakland A's Major League Baseball team (link). The following paragraphs from the article describe the kinds of things she does with A's pitchers:
“One of my biggest strengths is to take this complicated stuff and put it into baseball language,” Schultz said. “It’s not like I’m on the mound doing equations with the pitchers.” Schultz understands a breaking ball can be more effective when its gyro spin — or bullet spin — is high. Or a two-seam fastball can be more effective when it creates turbulent pockets of air. She’ll suggest a pitcher adjust his grip or throw harder at a different angle to create the wanted movement.
“If I say, ‘OK, we need to get more gyro spin on this ball,’ what I might say to a pitcher is to roll it off your middle finger,” Schultz said.
(Thanks to the Society for American Baseball Research [SABR], from whose weekly newsletter I learned of this article.)