Since the 1950s, I have been wondering how long it would take for a pitching machine to duplicate everything that human pitchers throw in real games.
Next stop - perfect football passing machines.
We need robots that perfectly replicate faked leg injuries in soccer.
I wonder if any will take time off for Tommy John surgery?
But can it throw a spitball like Gaylord Perry?
Nope. Only the ball itself void of the wind up idiosyncrasies.
A robot Babe Ruth isn’t gonna be far behind.
"Challenge the Yankees"
Each player card had outcomes for each dice roll outcome (the Sabermetrics of their time).
Nope. We need automated balls and strikes caller at the ML level.
Why have a pitcher at all? Just use the machine.
I want to see the Dennis Eckersley mod.
Mustache flickering in the breeze, long leather glove laces dangling in the field of view, upside down delivery, etc.
Announcer making ‘comments’.
All these added factors are kind of like the 35 seconds that Sully got added into the simulations of the Hudson River landing.
When the ball leaves the pitcher’s hand, he has given it 3 properties: vector, velocity and spin. Given modern PitchFx data it shouldn’t be that hard to fix a pitching machine that consistently throws Steve Carlton’s slider or Mariano Rivera’s cutter or Nolan Ryan’s fastball.