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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Pure luck leaves even the most useless batter with a decent chance to make contact with 1-in-100 pitches.
Getting in a proper hit on the other hand…
Us normies simply don’t have the reaction ability to process a major league pitch before it’s in the catchers glove. Pro players both have a natural instinct as well as a trained eye of seeing 10,000s of pitches over their careers with very gradual progression in difficulty.
Go to a local batting cage and try to hit 70 mph. You should get a feel for it after a while. Then go to 80. You’ll feel like you need to swing the second the ball pops out the machine with no ability to actually look where it’s going. The worst MLB pitchers throw their breaking stuff at 80, so now imagine this speed with all this weird spin action going on. Impossible. Then you think about 90 or 100 mph and I think at this point you accept your fate.
Edit after reading a few other comments: you will not even get lucky and make contact once.
I mean your average Joe just isn’t going to have the bat speed to catch up to a big league fastball. Tunneling is another huge aspect that gets lost when watching baseball vs playing it. Tunneling means that a pitchers fastball and curve ball will both look the same leaving the pitchers hand but after a few feet the spin on the ball will make it seem like the ball disappeared. (Leaving you swinging at a pitch in the dirt) While you might be able to get a hit out of 100 pitches your average Joe would not be able to hit a home run without plenty of training and practice.
You would be able to if you held the bat out and hoped the ball accidentally hit it. But if you’re going for a proper swing, a normal person doesn’t have the visual acuity or strength (bat speed) to react to the pitch and get the bat to make contact in the time it takes the ball to reach home plate.
A 95mph fastball takes about 425ms to cross the plate. You need to be able to see what pitch is being thrown, anticipate the trajectory, and actually execute a proper swing.
Couple all that with the fact that you have a built-in lag time of about 250ms (average human reaction speed) and it’s almost impossible to do without a significant amount of experience and training.
Unless you have baseball experience, actually hitting a major league pitcher is probably impossible. No comparison to a newbie catching a football or kicking a goal or making a 3 point basketball shot.
Too many variables, including ones that are not controllable by you or the pitcher. Sure, if a robot could put a ball at the same spot, same speed and everything over and over. Sure, you might be able to make contact in 100 pitches. Probably won’t go forward, but you could tip it. With the variance in pitch delivery release from their arm, movement of the ball, your reaction time, and really any position of yours or the pitcher’s body will change all results. I don’t think 100 pitches is enough to figure it out.
The pitcher could throw 20 pitches relatively the same speed and location and you could be locking in. Then you line up in a spot 1/2″ further from the plate and he releases the ball a fraction of a second later and 1/2″ further from you. Your whole game plan is ruined and you can’t hit it. Major leaguers who hit major league pitching can literally follow the ball and it’s spin from pitcher to plate and time their bat to make contact all withing a half a second. Not enough practice for only 100 pitches.
Based on pure luck you could probably at least get contact between the bat and the ball at least once with 100 tries in a row.
However, if the context is “get a hit” in baseball terms that would mean you would need to make contact and also have the ball go fair and also not result in you being put out either by a caught fly or thrown out at first. That is far leas likely to occur within 100 pitches against a pro.
Just making contact? Maybe possible if you have zero fear at all and are familiar with bunting. Otherwise if you’re making an actual swing and you haven’t played a decent amount of baseball, there’s zero chance.
I imagine most pitchers would brush you back with some fastballs, and then you’ll never have a chance because you’ll be too scared of getting annihilated.
There’s a delay of about 0.1 second from your eyes seeing something and your brain receiving this information. What we think we see is not what our eyes actually see, but what our brain predicts is going to happen after ~0.1 second, to compensate for this delay. This is the reason why optical illusions work, where you look at some unmoving image and perceive constant movement.
Because of this effect, an untrained average person will simply be unable to perceive/react to the ball fast enough.
P.S. 1 out of 100 is a very low bar to reach though, and you might be able to hit 1 out of 100 just purely by luck.
“I think without question the hardest single thing to do in sport is to hit a baseball. A .300 hitter, that rarest of breeds these days, goes through life with the certainty that he will fail at his job seven out of ten times.”-Ted Williams, the last person to bat .400 for a season in the Majors
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