Pitch by pitch this fall, Jonathan Hughes fired his four-seam fastball in the Georgia Tech bullpen. With each toss, a readout of the Georgia Tech senior’s spin efficiency popped up on an iPad.

Along with terms like launch angle and exit velocity, spin efficiency is a new-fangled addition to baseball argot. They are camera- and radar-tracked measurements of how a baseball travels when thrown or struck. Spin efficiency measures the spin rate of a pitched ball – generally, the faster the spin, the better – against the axis along which the ball is spinning. The higher the efficiency, the greater the movement.

From the time Hughes started fall practice to the end – Tech finishes Saturday with a home exhibition against Samford – his efficiency has gone from low to mid 80 percent to around 93 to 95 percent, he said.  “That’s a lot of improvement in a short amount of time,” said Hughes, a fifth-year senior…