Watching a Baseball Hit Your Bat

[The Tax Man]

Sometimes you need a scientist to help explain what other scientists are talking about. Luckily, sosh.com has @StupendousMan. Please take a look at this article if you are at all interested in what a batter sees in the batter's box:

A recent article, published in the journal PLOS ONE, describes experiments which show that as long as a batter can see the first half or so of a pitch’s trajectory, he can still put the bat in the correct place to make solid contact. The authors of this study, Contribution of Visual Information about Ball Trajectory to Baseball Hitting Accuracy, are a group of sports scientists in Japan. The lead author, Takatoshi Higuchi, works at Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto, while his co-authors are based in Waseda University, Nara Women’s University, and, in the case of former Japanese big-league pitcher Masakazu Watanabe, Fukuoka University. Their research was supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, which – disclaimer – has kindly funded some of my own collaborations with Japanese scientists.

 

[Just a bit outside]

This is really cool.

I think it also points out why deception in a pitcher's delivery can have such an impact on hitters. A hitter who can't pick up the ball quickly is at such a disadvantage.

 

[santadevil]

Nice job on the .com Mike.
Really informative.

 

[IdiotKicker]

This is absolutely fascinating stuff, and done in a way that make it about as easy to explain as you can given the subject matter. Love it.

 

[zimmerolls]

I hate to say an article of this type is riveting but it was just that. Well thought out experiment right down to marking the sweet spots of the bats and the combination of pitch types and speeds. I'll pass this along.
Thanks.