The Baseball Observer May-June 2016 vol 7 | Page 55

what perceived speed early in the delivery. This is why getting the bat on trajectory/plane with the ball is so important – more room for error (see The Baseball Observer article "Want to Hit? - Stop Swinging Down!"). How humans are able to estimate the expected position of a quickly moving ball is still being researched.

The simplest explanation posed is that the skill is learned through a lot of practice and seeing thousands of different types of pitches from little league on up. This develops Eye-to-Brain-to-Body coordin ation. Going through the motions over and over through years of hitting experience is the only way batters seem to develop the ability to accurately predict the arrival location of a pitch.

Athleticism alone just won't do the job.

Research

A recent article, published in the journal PLOS ONE, February 5, 2016 -

Contribution of Visual Information about Ball Trajectory to Baseball Hitting Accuracy – by Takatoshi Higuchi et. al. describes experiments, using college players, which show that as long as a batter can see the first half or so of a pitched ball, he can still put the bat in the correct place to make solid contact. Their success in hitting comes from identifying the pitch early.

Research overview.

Subjects

The research subjects were ten collegiate baseball field players (five right handed batters and five left handed batters).

Set Up

The researchers set up a pitching machine at the same distance from home plate as a pitchers release point. The machine threw two types of pitches – fastballs at 90mph and change ups at 71mph. All the fastballs had identical speed and spin and all change ups had identical speed and spin. The type of pitch thrown to the batters were randomized by a computer. Each batter was thrown 36 pitches.

The batters wore a visual occlusion liquid-crystal apparatus (special glasses that the lenses could be electronically altered). Depending on the signal, the lenses in the glasses would:

a) do nothing and be like normal

safety glasses and allow the

batter to see the entire pitch.

They labeled this as “NO”.

b) would become opaque exactly

150 milliseconds after the ball

left the pitching machine;

therefore, the batter would see

only the initial behavior of the

pitch. They labeled this as

“R+150”

c) would turn opaque 150

milliseconds before the ball

reached home plate; this blocked

the batter’s view of the final

portion of the pitch. They

labeled this as “A-150”

For each thrown pitch, a computer randomly selected one of the three lens configurations so that each batter would get 12 swings under each condition. The batters didn’t know how the glasses would behave during each pitch.

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