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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Unless you have near perfect vision and near perfect reactions you’re not even going to *see* a major league pitch before it hits the catchers glove. It’s easy to underestimate just how fast these things are going from up in the stand, but if you’re standing at the plate, with it coming at you.
Let’s do the math.
Will give you a generously slow 80mph pitch. Thats ((80*5280)/60)/60)=117.3 feet per second the ball is covering. The distance from the mound to the plate is 60.5 feet, giving you just over half a second (specifically 0.52 seconds) from the time the pitcher releases the ball till you have to hit it.
Now consider that it takes the average person 300ms for their brain to process the light coming into their eyes. Roughly 1/3 of a second for you to even see that the ball is headed your way. You now have 210 milliseconds to react if you’re even going to swing before the ball is in the catcher’s mitt. The average reaction time is 250 milliseconds, and 210 would put you somewhere around the 80th percentile, meaning 80% of people wouldn’t even be quick enough to swing at the ball, let alone hit it.
Of the 20% of people who would be able to react quick enough to take a swing, you still face the very significant challenge of actually hitting that small, fast moving target.
And remember, this is among the *slowest* major league pitches, and we’re not even accounting for things like curve balls or sinkers. If we pump the numbers up to the average major league fastball speed of 93mph, we get 144ms that you have to react by the time your brain realizes that the pitch has been thrown, which would put you in the 95th percentile.
In short, there are only 5% of people on the planet who would *even be able to swing* at an average major league fastball before it hits the catcher’s mitt. And of those 5% even fewer would have the hand-eye coordination to have a chance of hitting the ball on anything more than pure, dumb luck. And of those people? Most of them are getting paid to play baseball.
I went to a batting cage once, and selected the “fast pitch” one. I’m standing there, ready to swing, and BAM the ball hit the backstop before I even saw it coming.
that being said, with a human pitcher you’re going to be able to clearly see his windup and throw, you could swing randomly and have a non-zero chance of making some contact with the ball.
1 out of 100 to make any contact? I’d take that bet.
I’d like to change it up a bit and look at it from a different angle. If the pitchers trying to make you miss, as in trick you with pitches and actually throwing some of the insane breaking stuff, then its just chance on you hitting it mostly. At some point you would but it may or may not be less than 100. Some of the crazy stuff looks like a fast ball til right before it hits the plate. To where even the pros are not touching it. Also part of what makes a good pitcher is being able to tell where they can get you. You not being a pro opens up that box for them to continue to constantly trick you etc. Once again you might hit something intentionally or accidentally. But it just depends on if it is more or less than 100.
I’d like to change it up a little though and say that they are maybe still trying to make you miss, but instead of playing mind games, they’re keeping it more simple with how they choose their pitches.
if you committed to only bunting and we’re assuming that the pitcher is also committing every pitch to the strike zone (cause what’s the point otherwise in this scenario), then I think it is absolutely possible to, at minimum, make contact.
Depending on your experience with a bat and other reflexes though it might take more than 100.
If you have no experience swinging a bat, and you intend to actually swing, then it just depends on the person and chance, on whether you hit anything. Think about how many pitches they’ve seen in their lifetime and still can’t make contact.
But going back to my point above. Typical at-bats consist of only a handful of consecutive pitches. Watch an at bat where someone is getting a ton of pitches and starting to foul them all off. After a certain point they start making more and more contact. They’re not necessarily doing anything, but they’re making contact.
Even for a professional that little bit of extra time of repetition helps their brain slow the pitches down. The more consecutive pitches you see the more your brain can adapt to see what’s coming.
Once again, a full swing is completely different than a bunt. You may not even be able to fully swing the bat before the ball got there depending on your fitness level. I don’t think it’s as impossible as others are saying though. People forget that pros don’t care about just contact, but effective contact. And also typically get 5-10 pitches at a time. if you changed the game where pitchers pitched the same but the intention was now for the batter to just touch the ball no matter where it ended up, and they got 100 at a time, they could probably do it 99 out of 100.
if you watch formula 1 drivers before a race, right before they get in the cars they are doing activities to help focus their reaction time. It’s not that they don’t have 1000’s of hours behind the wheel. But a lot of it is repetition for the brain. So instead of waiting till they’re racing to build that repetition, they’re doing it right before. They don’t need to “be ok on 1 out of 100 starts”. They need be exceptional on 1 out of 1 starts off the line. They don’t get the temporary conditioning of starting over and over again. They just get one chance which means they have to do the temporary conditioning right before they get in the car.
Your brain can adapt heavily to repetition. It’s one of the reasons sports people practice so much. If you have the mental and physical endurance to overcome getting tired then eventually you would start to see the benefits of that. Once again though, depending on the above it might be more or less than 100
The specific athleticism required is also not present in most/all of us normies.
You don’t swing with your arms and elbows; you spin your entire body and pivot your feet to really drive into the ball. All of that within fractions of a second from when the ball is released.
Like, if we tried to hit a perfect hit off a tee-ball, it would literally take us 20+ actual contacts to get a solid “hit”, not to mention we would totally whiff a couple, and that’s a ball that’s entirely stationary
Cause eliminating any movement or breaking pitches, straight up pitches are extremely fast. For normies like us you basically have to start swinging before you see it.
If you can’t grasp it, go to a batting cage (no softball but regular size balls). No go thru each speed. As you get to the fastest, they top out only at 60-75 mph. Major league pitchers pitch 80-90mph routinely (yes there might be slower breaking and off speed pitches but), nevermind the guys who throw mid to high 90s.
It’s a whole another level.
All prior assumes the ball is coming down the middle (mid center). Now add different locations high, low, center, inside, center, outside.
It’s one of those you have to experience it to see how crazy it is.
[Someone off the street wouldn’t have the speed and anticipation required. ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RENLMum5wz4)
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.
Would you know in advance which pitch they’d throw? Like if Cole was throwing you a 98MPH 4 Sean then decided to throw a curve you’d be so fucked.
I think the best bet would be to attempt to bunt and pray the ball.hits your bat (not you hitting the ball)
Is this because of The Yard?
I’m from England, so I don’t have a fucking clue what you’re all banging on about. Baseball here simply isn’t a thing. But I’m super engaged by this thread and this question. Very interesting indeed.
Could anyone recommend a YouTube vid that took me though the basics of what pitching is, and why batting is so hard please?
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