WHY wouldn’t I be able to hit one out of 100 pitches from a major leaguer?

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I want to start this by saying, I am not so idiotic as to think I actually would be able to hit a major league pitcher.

But when presented with the “do you think you’d be able to even make contact on 1 out of 100 pitches by a pitcher”, I’d like to understand why.

Like if they did nothing but pitch breaking stuff, couldn’t I just overcorrect? Same deal with fastballs? I’m sure they would mix it up, but out of 100 straight pitches, if you were a major-league pitcher, what would you do to make sure that they never made contact?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

Hey OP. British person checking in here. I know this isn’t precisely the same, but there’s a cricket analogy here – both balls are delivered at between 80 and 100mph with almost complete control by the pitcher/bowler.

The batter – the pro batters – is almost certainly not actually expecting to watch the ball, but rather is watching the arm or stance of the pitcher/bowler – the multiple thousand times they’ve done this allows them to estimate where the most likely place a delivery will end up and swing there. A non-pro just doesn’t have the circuits in their brain to process this.

The person delivering the ball – if it was to the likes of you and me – can disguise their intentions so well as the to make the non-pro batter almost irrelevant. The ball will loop, hiss and curve in ways we don’t understand. A ball travelling towards you above 80mph is – for all intents and purposes – invisible to a non-pro.

I’d go so far as saying a complete amateur wouldn’t be able to hit 1 in 200 baseball/cricket balls bowled by a top pro.

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