Posted on 04/21/2006 5:45:04 PM PDT by buccaneer81
Busting Baseball Myths: Scientist Throws Big Curveballs By Bjorn Carey LiveScience Staff Writer posted: 20 April 2006 09:06 am ET Your Little League coach probably didn't know it, but every time he sent you to the plate with the instructions "keep your eye on the ball," he was giving you an impossible task. And if you followed the coach's advice of positioning yourself directly under a popup, you probably struggled to catch balls in the outfield, too. Ken Fuld, a baseball enthusiast and visual psychophysicist at the University of New Hampshire, has pored over numerous baseball studies and suggests that neither of these approaches produce optimal results. Instead, much to your coach’s chagrin, you should try mimicking the quirks of the best Major League players.
(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...
Big boo boo there, AC. RBI's are almost worthless in describing the ability of a hitter.
And those were the years he was winning more games, too. It's pretty remarkable for a Hall of Famer with more than 300 career victories, but he pitched for nearly 20 years after the last season (1974) he won 20 games.
That's correct.
What I would not accept is a claim that the backspin has negligible effect on the trajectory of the ball.
That's correct, too.
The amount of backspin (or forward spin) on a baseball is very important. In a pure overhand curve, the ball drops the most due to its forward spin. Three things make a ball with backspin "drop". One is low backspin as in a splitter or forkball. The second is less stitches presented to the direction of travel. So, a two-seam (sinker) gets less lift than a four-seam and therefore drops more if thrown at the same speed. The third factor is slower speed. Therefore, if a pitcher throws two two-seams followed by a four-seam, the ball will drop less, making the hitter think it "rose". Slightly different speeds enter into these pitches, too, but I think this should be clear enough.
...Nolan Ryan though, took the blazing fastball, great curve to a level never before seen...
I completely agree with you on Nolan Ryan... He also had a change up pitch that was faster than most pitchers fastball. Heck, his curve ball was faster than most pitchers fastball!
I saw Ryan quite few times in Houston when he was at his top, and it was frankly just not fair for mere mortals to have to stand at the plate and face him! LOL! I think he probably got more strike outs with the curve and change up than the fastball.
Looking at the morning box scores for a Maddux type pitcher I go to the pitch count before anything else. When they're on, it's 75-80 pitches max. Awesome.
Why not put a link that goes to the story?
Just look at the top ten career leaders in RBIs:
1. Hank Aaron
2. Babe Ruth
3. Cap Anson
4. Lou Gehrig
5. Stan Musial
6. Ty Cobb
7. Jimmie Foxx
8. Eddie Murray
9. Willie Mays
10. Mel Ott
If you disregard the actual order in which they stand, and you replace one guy (Eddie Murray) who got on this list simply by hanging around for a long time with another (Ted Williams) who missed several seasons in the peak of his career due to his military service . . . I'd say you could easily make the case that these are the ten best all-around hitters in baseball history.
And even if this point can be debated, I think you'd be hard-pressed to come up with a better indicator of offensive talent over the course of an entire career.
It's right there under top stories.
You can't statistically define a "clutch hitter" because they DO NOT EXIST.Statistics cannot define a "clutch hitter" because statistics are art as much as science. Stats explain much and don't explain so much more. Not even your pal Voros gets it right more than your average hitter. Like hitting, statistics are 9/10ths timing -- and vice-versa.
Yes, Virginia, there are clutch hitters. Just not the same ones every year.
If you ever remember seeing J.R. Reynolds (Astros) or Doc Gooden and even Nolan Ryan, those were most two pitch pitchers. They weren't trying to hide that fact that it was going to be a flat fastball but they were going to throw it so fast that you wouldn't have time to figure out where it was aimed at so you could swing in time.
Ah, pitching. One of the metaphysical activities in sports.
Utterly asinine. If clutch hitters are different every year, then they aren't really clutch hitters. A real clutch hitter should be able to duplicate the phenomenon if future seasons. If he can't, then he's not really a clutch hitter.
I thought you said that "clutch hitters don't exist." Is there or is there not such a thing?
A hard throwing pitcher who can put it by a batter at will commands a healthy respect for his #1 pitch. And, since the batter has to respect that pitch so much that he is usually way out in front of the change or he is frozen by the curve.
Amazing watching a craftsman work.
Norm Cash (clubhouse table leg).
"it's impossible for a pitch thrown downward to buck gravity and achieve upward lift."
It's also theoretically impossible for a bumblebee to fly, but as we all have seen they do fly..
Yes, Sandy Koufax had a fastball that actually rose. He used it to pitch a 3 hit shutout against the heavy hitting Minnesota Twins in game 7 of the 1965 World Series. Sandy pitched a complete 9 inning game on only 2 days rest, so his curveball wasn't working well. No problem, he threw only fastballs! Koufax had also gone the distance in game 5, a complete game 4 hit shutout.
Practice your curve balls here:
http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/airplane/foil2b.html
Wouldn't a ball have to have forward spin in order to have an upward force due to the spin?
Reasoning: Forward spin produces greater airspeed over top of ball than under the bottom. According to Bernoulli, this means less normal force from air pressure on the top than on the bottom. Thus, net upward force on the ball due to spin.
Not that it could overcome the ball's weight, of course.
"Wonder what a baseball with dimples would do?"
Batters would need those oversized wiffle-ball bats to even get close to the curves and spins of a dimpled ball.
Ourfielders would need giant Clown gloves to have a chance to catch a pop fly ... imagine seeing a high pop fly to the outfield, the outfielders would be running around like a bunch of drunks trying to get a bead on the thing.
Ha ha ha ha.
Reasoning: Forward spin produces greater airspeed over top of ball than under the bottom. According to Bernoulli, this means less normal force from air pressure on the top than on the bottom. Thus, net upward force on the ball due to spin.
That is exactly the reasoning that was presented in my HS science textbook. Trouble is, baseballs are illiterate and never read that book. A right-handed baseball pitcher throws a curve by snapping his wrist in a way which imparts a counterclockwise spin on the ball, viewed from above. Your logic would predict that the ball would break to the right, into a right-handed batter.But I solemnly assure you that the right-handed curve ball breaks away from a righthanded batter (or into a lefthanded batter, which gives the lefthanded batter the advantage since he is able to get the sweet spot of his bat around far enough on a curve which surprises him by being more inside than he expected but also slower than he expected if he was looking for a fastball. The righthanded batter who was looking for a fastball, OTOH, is surprised by the curve's position being further away, requiring that he delay his swing in order to get the sweet spot of the bat on the ball and also by the fact that the curve is slower. The two effects of the righthander's curveball are additive to the righthand batter but tend to cancel each other to the lefthand batter).
Who are you going to believe - your logic and my high school physic book, or every baseball manager who ever substituted a lefty pinch hitter to face a righthanded pitcher?
See, the fact that the Bernoulli analysis predicts the wrong direction also makes those who rely on Bernoulli questionable authorities when they preach that the magnitude of the force involved is less than the weight of the ball. Apparently, that stupid illiterate ball knows something I don't!
Wouldn't a ball have to have forward spin in order to have an upward force due to the spin?A right-handed baseball pitcher throws a curve by snapping his wrist in a way which imparts a counterclockwise spin on the ball, viewed from above. Your logic would predict that the ball would break to the right, into a right-handed batter.
But I solemnly assure you that the right-handed curve ball breaks away from a righthanded batter
I also had a humiliating experience the first time I played catcher in a teen baseball game: I missed a pop-up. Why? I had plenty of time to get under it, and the first baseman could easily have come in and caught it. But as I was standing where the trajectory of the ball was headed, the ball curved away from me and landed two or three yards away!Boy, did I go to school on that! The popup is obviously a ball headed toward the catcher which is struck by the bat close to the bottom of the ball. So the ball rapidly spins, with the top of the ball spining away from the pitcher and the bottom of the ball spinning toward the pitcher. The result is that on its upward path the popup is curving back toward the catcher - but when it reverses direction and falls down, the ball breaks toward the pitcher. And dramatically so, enough to make an apparently easy catch a humiliating not-even-close miss.
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