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Sunday, August 21, 2005
Predicting a Baseball's Path
Interesting article on baseball pitches. My research professor thought I would be interested in this (he read it to see if it could give him any help on spin for tennis (of course, understanding and being able to apply spin effectively are very separate). I knew most of the basic ideas, but it interesting to see how many rotations a ball takes for each pitch (approximately 3000 rpm for a curveball and 1200 rpm for a fastball...or about 50 rotations per pitch on a curve ball and 10 rotations per pitch on a fastball). It then goes on to discuss how the eye perceives the different type of pitches and why certain ones are effective (such as rotation and how well the seams can be seen). It does a good job with the generalization of pitches, but it does not really try to describe specific differences very much (it discusses the spin and sight differences of the 2-seam and 4-seam fastball, but it does not really discuss why the 4-seamer is typically faster or the 2-seamer typically has more movement...or if that is just a visual perception on the part of the batter). Anyways, it makes for an interesting read and has some nice diagrams and pictures.
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