Watching compilations like this really helps show just how hard it is to hit a baseball. Frankly it's a small miracle anyone ever makes contact at all 😂
Brits have no appreciation for knuckleballers. Only Americans, Canadians, Cubans, Mexicans, Japanese, Korean, etc. who play baseball can truly appreciate and DESPISE knuckleballs. 🤣
To answer your question about if pitchers know how the ball will move, they know exactly how it SHOULD move, but lots of variables can effect that. They know exactly what the pitch does and where it goes when thrown perfectly, but many things can happen to prevent the ball from being thrown perfectly.
1:41 Knuckle ball - It has no spin on it so it tends to float about, tiny moves up, down, left and right. If you watch it, you can see the seams are barely moving. Those tiny moves throw off the batters perception (and the catchers) and make them really hard to hit (and catch).
The movement of breaking pitches is a complex combination of factors, but mostly the rotation you're able to get on the ball. The seams (those red stitches that hold the white leather together) create friction against the air itself as it moves. The more it rotates, the more the pitch will move. While I think the velocity dropoff does play a part in it, I'm pretty sure it's not a very large part. Also, the one pitch you mentioned that you didn't see looked like it was a knuckleball in slow motion. That's a pitch that's thrown so that there's very little rotation, usually only about one or two rotations for the entire trip to the catcher. The idea is to create very unpredictable movement by randomizing the amount of air grabbed by the seams mid-flight. It's sadly almost completely abandoned these days.
To compare it to (I assume) your favorite sport, these huge hooking curveballs are nearly identical to *that* one free kick Dimitri Payet scored a few years back. The pitcher puts enough topspin on the ball, the ball will suddenly dip down with gravity about halfway to the plate. The stitching on baseballs cause them to move way stronger compared to that of a football, as the stitching creates much more air friction on the ball. Should also be worth mentioning that, almost every major league pitcher has a similar breaking ball, with topspin as its main feature. Meanwhile, to get topspin on a football off of set pieces… only set piece specialists can truly pull that off. Payet was just most well known simply because he was able to get an absolutely absurd amount of dip on his shots, which (and this is no coincidence) froze keepers in their tracks, just like a brutal breaking ball can freeze or choke up a batter.
Each pitch works because of spin. The more spin on one direction, the more it moves the opposite way. Curveballs, the ones that drop down around 75ish mph work with spin on the top and sometimes side of the ball, it makes it cut down very hard and sometimes it moves to the side as well. Sliders work with spin on the side, and give a huge sideways cut that is pretty much impossible to touch. Each pitch is slightly different. A pitcher throws each pitch tens of thousands of times, so they know very well how it will move. However, sometimes they slip a little and it doesn't spin as fast, making it move less and usually ends up getting hit. Throwing perfect pitches is something that nobody can do, it's too stressful on the arm and too difficult to get the same spin every time. A perfect fastball every single time will tear the elbow or dislocate the shoulder very quick. A perfect breaking ball will tear the elbow or snap a wrist. It's not uncommon for pitchers to end their career with injury, because the arm is being used so much with so much force (the most force on the shoulder out of any sport on the planet) that it is very hard to continue using it. The price for those injuries are usually amazing pitches, so usually the best pitchers get hurt, and it is never good to see
What makes a pitch different from the other is the grip and release, the effect increases if you manage to throw the ball harder but every pitcher can put his personal touch on the pitching mechanics as well.
There is avideo from Major League Baseball on UA-cam called what pitch was that. It talks about the science of the spin and the low and high pressure pockets above and below the ball.
I read somewhere that major league hitters have .7 seconds(not 7, but 7/10 of a second) to decide if they're going to swing at a pitch or not. The hardest thing to do in professional sports is to hit a round ball with a round bat with the ball coming from 60 feet away at 90+ MPH, and the ball bending, dipping, rising, etc.
With some of these, what's nasty isn't so much the amount of movement, as the fact that the movement is subtle, and late, and *just enough* to catch the edge of the strike zone on a pitch the hitter had already decided not to swing at. Of course, sometimes a batter gets fooled but manages to correct -- which is probably the case when, for example, the batter falls to one knee but hits a home run anyway. Which has happened a few times, here's a video compilation: ua-cam.com/video/JJYtMsmkuDk/v-deo.html The pitchers *should* know exactly how the ball will move, and they generally do, but occasionally they misfire on one and it doesn't move like it's supposed to. The exception to this is knuckleball pitchers. Rather than using spin to make the ball move, a knuckleball is thrown with as little spin as possible, which then makes it move unpredictably because of the seams and the air currents and such. This makes it hard to aim, and also hard to catch, but also very hard to hit. Unfortunately, it's also a very hard pitch to throw, and at any given time there's maybe one or two guys in the majors who are willing to actually use it in a game. At 5:55, the pitch may have been going wide to start with, but it wasn't by much, and possibly that umpire is known for giving an extra inch or two on the outside of the plate -- there's a lot of scouting on umpire tendencies like that, and as long as the umpire is consistent from pitch to pitch over the course of a game, nobody's really going to complain. At 7:05, that's the kind of pitch I used to feast on... but then, when I was growing up, I'd play with my dad in the backyard and due to my being rather small, my dad had a hard time throwing the ball low enough for it to be in my strike zone, so I just learned to swing the bat at high pitches like I was hitting a piñata. At 8:05: No, the batter didn't run there, because it wasn't strike 3. Running on a wild pitch (or passed ball -- the term for when the pitch isn't wild, but the catcher still misses it) is only an option on strike 3 for the batter, though runners on base can try on other pitches. 9:00: Yeah, 60-odd MPH is about the lowest you're going to see except for the occasional "eephus" or "lob" pitch that a few pitchers will employ once or twice a season when they're out of other ideas. The reason for this is simple: if you throw slower than that with a trajectory that isn't a super-high lob, the ball will bounce before it reaches the plate 60 feet 6 inches away from the pitching rubber (18.44 meters, although this does include the pitcher's stride length.) 9:40: Yeah, you got it. Not to mention that even if you know a fastball is coming, and you know where they're aiming, it's *still* hard to hit a 100-mile-an-hour ball with a round bat and keep it in play. 10:30: Those caps you like are the Atlanta Braves. Personally I'm a fan of the Chicago Cubs and I think they have great caps too; a blue cap with red bill and red C logo. As for how the pitches break so late, I think some of it is the speed -- a faster pitch will typically break later than a slower pitch -- but it's more just that it takes time for the air resistance to fully "catch" on the ball's spin, and of course a faster pitch will be closer to the plate by the time that happens than a slower pitch, simply because it's moving faster. I should throw in that a good source for pitching videos is PitchingNinja; he'll do overlays of two pitches by a pitcher to show how they start off looking exactly the same and then finish over a foot apart or more (a foot is about 30cm). An example video of his can be seen here: ua-cam.com/video/zCuRW4AVtPQ/v-deo.html and he also has a twitter.
10:40.... it's not black, but Navy blue. But yes, they are one of the nicest hats in the MLB currently! The Boston Red Sox, Detroit Tigers, New York Yankees, Seattle Mariners, Houston Astros, Cleveland Guardians (formerly Indians), and Milwaukee Brewers are the other teams who use a navy blue hat almost every game. So it's very common!
@@MrNinja543 no it shouldnt be possible for the human brain to process the pitch, decide whether or not to swing, tell the body to swing, and swing in time to hit the ball
@@anonymous__________________ Much less to be able to tell WHERE it's going. These guys are reading the laces on the ball as it comes in which is insane, they're seeing the rotation of the ball in the air. To be able to read the direction the ball is spinning while it's coming in at 95-100 MPH is wicked.
I wonder if people who make claims like this ever stop for a second and consider what it is they’re actually saying and the logical implications thereof. For instance, what does it actually mean to say that something “shouldn’t” be physically possible? Seriously, think about it for a minute - what does “hitting a major league pitcher shouldn’t be scientifically possible” mean? What is it really saying? Is it saying that professional baseball players have somehow developed the ability to violate the laws of physics? Is it saying that some aspect of causality becomes warped or nullified in the vicinity of pentagon-anchored diamonds? Is it saying… anything coherent at all? Well, in case it’s not clear yet, the correct answer to that last one is “no, it sure ain’t.” Put simply, the claim that “it shouldn’t be physically possible to hit a major league pitcher” is, as the saying goes, not even wrong - it’s devoid of meaning altogether. Kinda like the statement, “60% of the time, it works every time.” Now, there’s something almost-but-not-really-well-okay-maybe-kinda-sorta similar to OP’s “fact” that actually IS true, which is that it’s physically impossible for a hitter to accurately discern where a pitch will cross the plate - and thus where and when to swing his bat - solely based on visual information (obviously there is a pitch velocity requirement here, but let’s just assume we’re talking about average ML pitchers throwing fastballs at average ML velocities - so somewhere in the 90-95mph range). Stated differently, for any given pitch there will be a moment in time at which the batter must have a. determined where & when he thinks the ball will cross the plate, b. whether or not he’s going to swing at it, and, if he is, c. cannot wait any longer and must begin the process of swinging (i.e. start sending all those action potentials to all those muscles and what not) - I believe this point is typically around 150ms after the pitcher’s release of the ball, which gives the batter ~100ms (1/10th of a second) to watch the pitch and make a swing decision (I know those numbers are at least close, but it’s possible they’re slightly off, so don’t quote me). Anyway, the important part is this: at that moment in time - the moment at which the batter must begin his swing - it is not physically possible* to accurately deduce where the ball will cross home plate based solely on his observation of the ball’s current location and flight path to that point. So, the way players actually determine the timing and location of their swing in real life is by mentally calculating an estimate or prediction, which they do using a combination of a. that fraction-of-a-second observation of the pitch, and specifically it’s flight path/trajectory, spin, and velocity; b. any information they know about the opposing pitcher, e.g. his pitch repertoire or situational tendencies; and c. the intuition and instinct they’ve accumulated over the years through the thousands and thousands of other pitches they’ve seen before. My assumption is that this - all the reaction time/swing decision stuff I was just talking about and the research underlying it - is actually what served as the genesis for what eventually became the “fact” shared by the OP - I’m sure the OP’s source of information was an article or blog post or what have you in which the author discussed the information or the studies and research substantiating it. And, whether or not the article itself was accurate and objective, I have no doubt that, if not the author, there was some intellectually lazy/dishonest editor who came up with the ‘science proves hitting fastballs shouldn’t be physically possible’ phrasing for its sensationalism and clickbaitiness. * I’m not clear on whether the term “not physically possible” as used here means it’s truly, literally not computable, period (i.e. even if one had all of the visually available data it would still be insufficient), or if it simply means that it’s not possible for a human to make such a calculation due either to the complexity of the problem, the small amount of processing time available, and/or our sensory inputs lacking the requisite acuity (or maybe something else entirely).
That's a knuckleball at 1:09. You can see the laces as the ball approaches the plate. That's why it makes such an insane break, and why it gets by the catcher. There's another knuckleball at 1:41. It changes direction more than once on the way to the plate. The batter can run to first if strike 3 is a pitch in the dirt, and first base is unoccupied or there are two outs. The pitch at 8:24 is a curveball, not a sinker. A curveball is a relatively slow pitch that usually has a big break, and a sinker is a type of fastball that has a smaller break at the last fraction of a second. In this case, it was a twelve-to-six curve, which means it broke straight down. It's the 74 MPH speed and the looping path that tells you it's a curveball.
When the ball gets by the catcher that's called a 'Passed Ball', any players currently on base can advance if warranted, only time the Batter would run on a Passed Ball if it's called Strike 3 but the ball gets past the catcher, the batter then gets another chance to get on base if not thrown out.
the only pitch that Pitchers cant predict the movement is on a KnuckleBall , thats the one on 1:38 . That pitch has no Spin or small amount of spin to it. Knuckleball can go left right up down with no spin at all.
If you look at the way a baseball is made, it has seams all around. The way the pitcher grips it along the seams along with the wrist/arm action determines how fast it is, what type of pitch it is, and how it breaks.
When the rotation of the ball exceeds the speed there is a tipping point where it starts to move. So a fast spinning ball that is slowing slightly as it loses velocity due to gravity and air resistance will tumble in a prescribed direction.
It’s all about spin rate and the direction of the spin. Pitchers can do amazing things with a baseball if they can control or even halfway control those 2 things
Hi BG. You may have heard announcers refer to a pitch as an "Uncle Charlie" or an "Eephus." Those are names for very slow curve balls, such as that pitch you saw that went 66 miles per hour.
The physics behind the breaking balls is spin rate and how aerodynamics works with the stitches on the ball. How you hold the ball, velocity and spin rate all determine how the ball moves when pitched. And yes, the pitches know generally how the ball is going to move but it all depends on how consistent those 3 factors above are.
The only pitch I truly think pitchers don’t know where they will end up are the knuckleballers because if no spin and the erratic movement of the pitch I’d hate to try and be a catcher receiving those pitches
What's amazing here too, is almost all the batters are all-star hitters, and these pitches make them look like they don't know what they're doing. Like Brad Pitt said in "Moneyball", "How do you not get romantic about baseball?"
It's the laces on the ball that allow the spin and movement as the ball moves through the air. Where you hold the ball, how you release it and the velocity all determine how a ball will act. The weather will also impact how a ball behaves. Pitchers have a good idea where the ball is going to go. But sometimes they might mess up the delivery and it goes somewhere other than where they want it to go. The batter can run if it's in the dirt with 2 strikes and they don't swing. And yes it's very difficult to hit a major league pitcher lol. Some great athletes have said it's the hardest thing to do in sports. There's a reason your considered great if you hit it only 30% of the time.
at 3:00 , he didn't just lob it. Clayton Kershaw, the pitcher that throws that ball, throws what's known as a 12-6 curve ball, meaning it has very little horizontal run, almost all vertical. he still threw that ball 75mph. He's famous for having one of the nastiest curveballs that baseball has seen. Him and Barry Zito have arguably the best 12-6's ever in the majors. All of the movement you see is based on 3 things: grip, velocity and rate of spin. different grips give you the different pitches which can be different movement. Velocity will impact the balls "run" towards or away from a hitter but the most important is rate of spin. This is more of a recent scientific discovery in the world of pitching. the higher rate of spin = nastier looking pitches. the ballis cutting through the air and once it loses a little velocity from gravity is when it stops playing pretend and starts moving with the air, that's why it seems straight and then breaks hard on some pitches like 2-seamers and sliders. You can only force it through gravity for so long until the ball has to do something with the spin, so it gives the ball movement. edit: at 1:01 , thats Tim Wakefield, interesting back story for him but ill spare you. He was one of the most successful knuckleballers. The point of the pitch is to grip it on your knuckles and push it off versus adding spin. The lack of spin make it look like it's "dancing" to a hitter, and the catcher for that matter, which is why he missed the catch lol. It's honestly a borderline uncontrollable pitch but there are very few who ever got it down to almost perfect and Wakefield was one of them. A real work of beauty.
At 8:04 in the video Joe asked if the batter could run on a pitch that hit the dirt. No Joe, he couldn't. The count was 0-0. The batter could not have run unless it was strike 3 or ball 4. On strike 3 the catcher has to catch the ball without it hitting the dirt. Otherwise the catcher has to tag the batter out or throw the ball to first base for the putout. On ball 4 the batter can either run or walk to first base. If the ball bounced to the backstop a batter might take off running in the slim hope that he could make it to second base before the ball was retrieved. Any runners already on base could have tried advancing on that pitch however.
The one that you said you didnt get was a knuckleball. It's very unpredictable where it goes because of the lack of spin, very similar to a knuckleball freekick in soccer
Something that might be fun to watch is knuckleballs. They're extremely rare and only thrown by a handful of pitchers but they're the opposite of these pitches - whereas instead of using speed and spin to get movement, they're intentionally thrown with NO spin, meaning due to the seams, they knuckle and dart randomly in the air, making it impossible to know where one will go for even the pitcher/catcher, let alone hitter. A bad knuckleballer will be eaten up due to a non-moving knuckleball basically just being a 70mph fastball, but a good one can be unhittable.
you might want to watch a couple PitchingNinja videos, they're short but a must if you want so see good pitching. Usually he'll do overlays where you can see how a pitcher's pitches move relative to one another and it really drives home how hard hitting is
to answer your question, balls get away from pitchers sometimes. thats why you randomly see a batter getting hit. especially on fastballs. In general, the more velocity you have, the less control you typically have. pitchers can typically control where it's going about 90% of the time. If you ever want to verify, just look at where the catcher sets up right before the pitch is thrown. That's where the ball is supposed to be. if a catcher has to reach back across the zone, the pitcher missed his spot. Pitchers stand above the hitter hence, the mound, therefore it's physically impossible to throw a "rising" fastball. However, from a hitters perspective, when you throw over a certain speed and high in the zone, it does look like the ball is rising but it literally can't. it's one of the most interesting things about high fastballs. they're also incredibly tough to read out of a pitchers hand.
Pitchers know what type of ball they’re going to throw, so they sort of know what movement to expect. Sometimes it works out, other times it doesn’t. The majority of cases it’s actually the guy catching the ball deciding what is thrown and where it is thrown, because they obviously want to catch it. You rarely ever see a catcher scramble to get a ball, assuming the batter doesn’t throw it off a bit with the bat or the pitcher messing up.
7:38 is blake treinen and a former nats teammate said that 98 mph pitch is the best in baseball but he couldnt control it well enough and was traded to oakland. Disgusting pitch
When pitchers have great command of their pitches they know exactly where it is going and it is hard to make contact. Some days pitchers don't have command of their pitches and they end up walking batters or giving up hits.
the Chris Sale highlights have another aspect to them. He is so tall an lanky and throws with a looong sidearm which essentially starts in line with a left handed batter. It has got to be insanely hard to read any pitch out of that arm slot as a lefty hitter
Some pitchers have incredible command, meaning they can place the ball wherever they want it to go. The degree to which a pitcher can do this will vary from player to player and among pitches that pitcher has in his arsenal. You might have excellent control of your curve ball but not as good control of your slider. Every guy has a best pitch which is his go-to pitch, typically the one he can command most precisely.
Amazing movement on these pitches. You will notice that the announcers refer to pitchers setting-up a batter. So early in the at bat you throw the batter some straight fastballs on the edges of the strike zone where they could be called strikes but are usually too close to take so the batter will usually swing at them. Then later in the at bat you throw him a pitch that looks like identical to all of the fastballs that you have already thrown him, but this one breaks at the last moment and fools him because he's expecting another fastball. Also remember that the a batter has mere milliseconds to identify and react to pitch. Yes, it seems and impossibly to hit the ball consistently. But many player do. That why they get paid the big $$$.♠
As for the reason *why* these pitches go straight and then curve, think about it this way: The pitcher always throws the ball pretty straight (that is, you can't "throw a ball in a curve" as it is always going to start out traveling in a straight line in the instant after it leaves your hand). The spin starts creating sideways movement--that is, movement _not_ in the direction the pitcher initially threw the ball--once the ball is in the air. In physics terms, the spin gives the ball a certain amount of acceleration perpendicular to the direction it was thrown, and with that limited amount of acceleration, it takes time for a noticeable amount of sideways motion to build up. That's why the curve gets tighter as the ball is in the air--the speed at which the ball moves away from the initial straight line in which it was thrown is not constant, but starts out very slow (especially considering the initial speed of the pitch) and speeds up. Now, it's also true that the ball slows down a bit as it gets closer to the plate, which also accentuates the curve since it has less and less forward movement "per" sideways movement, but the main reason is that the lateral speed is faster the closer you get to the plate. Picture releasing a spinning wheel or marble on a smooth table. It starts out slipping in place, and takes a moment to speed up until it's rolling normally. (I tried to find videos of this effect on UA-cam but wasn't really sure what to look for since it just kept finding videos of people doing related physics problems _on paper._) That's basically what happens with a late-breaking pitch: The air puts some force on the ball from the outset, but that force takes time to get it moving.
@8:12 no the batter couldn’t run because it wasn’t a 3rd strike he swung at. If their were people on base then they could have ran. But bases were empty and only 1 strike in the count. The only time the batter can run is when they swing and Miss on strike 3 and the catcher misses the ball
So a few answers here. First, the batter can only run on a pitch that would otherwise be strike 3. Most of the time this means they had to swing at a pitch in the dirt that gets past the catcher AND they have to already be on 2 strikes. Second, some of these pitches are called a "knuckleball", which you can tell based on the fact that the ball is basically not rotating at all in a slow motion shot. A knuckleball isn't subject to the usual pitching dynamics brought on by the spin, instead it can move very unpredictably since it's basically just going where the wind blows it. You'll even see the catcher not know where to move his glove because even he doesn't know where the pitch is going. The problem with throwing a knuckleball (and the reason most pitchers don't throw it) is that if you put even slightly too much spin on it, it will sort of just float there and be super easy to hit. Third, some of these don't look like they're moving much. This is generally for two reasons, first, it was included in this compilation because it was either a really fast fastball or a really unexpected changeup. Second, the precise position of the camera used matters a lot for how obvious a pitch's movement is. Every pitch camera here is meant for a right handed pitcher, so the lefties will get a very different look. Also, if the ball breaks in the direction parallel to the camera, it won't be very obvious.
With most types of pitches, the pitcher has a good idea of where the ball is going. A few exceptions would be a knuckleball (nobody knows where they might go), a "hanging" breaking ball (sometimes a ball that is supposed to have movement at the end, doesn't. This is usually because the pitcher didn't get a tight rotation on the ball. "It slipped"), and sometimes a wind gust, from an odd direction, can cause a curve ball to actually back up, or curve the wrong direction.
They know exactly where it should go and how it should move. A hanging breaking ball is when it doesn't break as much as intended and is when hitters can do real damage
Pitching is considered the most important position. Teams have up to 10 different pitchers on the team (bullpen) at any time. A good pitcher can shut a power hitting team down. Teams can remove and replace as many pitchers during a game. Speed and spin rate determine breaking balls. If a hitter is successful 3 out of 10 times, or a batting average of .300, he is considered an all star. Thats how hard it is to hit a major league pitcher.
In answer to your question; pitchers know the intended location of a pitch but a pitch can miss based on may variables, such as - if their release point is off - they may not get the exact grip they've intended - fatigue. You'll hear announcers say, "That pitch missed", or, "That one stayed up in the zone." Batters love the mistakes.
A batter can only run when the catcher misses a pitch on strike 3. (If the catcher misses it's called a "passed ball." If it's the pitcher's mistake it's called a "wild pitch")
You should look for a video of Kyle Schwarbers home runs. He's still one of my favorite players even though he isn't on the Cubs anymore. I always check to see how he is doing (led the NL in HR's last season!)
Pitch types can be really hard to categorize. It varies between pitchers a lot. Some pitchers throw Sliders as fastballs and some throw them as breaking or off-speed pitches. Depends. Fastballs are generally universal, in that they are 4 seam, 2 seam, cutter, rising, split-finger, and sinker. But again a pitcher could throw a slider super hard and it'd be considered more of a fastball...especially if their slower slider is more of a sweeper. Off-speed pitches are generally any pitch below 90mph that has significant movement. Change-ups (palm and fork can be out in here generally), Curveball (Regular, 12-6, Screwball, etc), Sliders/Sweepers, etc. And then there is one pitch that is so random and unique that it has its own category...the Knuckle-Ball. It's slow, generally slower than all other pitches. And the best ones have no rotation/spin at all. They look like they are hovering and constantly moving randomly...like a soap bubble. If a pitcher throws an excellent Knuckle-Ball it's generally their main pitch. It's a very difficult pitch to master and can be extremely hard to hit...the issue is that when a batter is waiting for one and they get it and manage to make contact...they can go quite a long way...but usually they miss or hit them straight up in the air or straight down into the ground. Generally pitchers excel in 1 or 2 fastballs and 1 or 2 off-speed pitches. Then there are the freaks...Tim Wakefield, R.A. Dickey, and Phil Niekro with their Knuckle Balls...and monsters of speedy fastballs like Aroldis Chapman, Jordan Hicks, Shohei Ohtani, etc. Then the aliens...Yu Darvish and Shohei Ohtani most readily fit this description. Yu Darvish can throw over 20 different pitches at elite levels, but in a game he generally keeps it to 7-10. Shohei is very similar, which makes sense since Yu did mentor him a bit. The pitcher with the most disgusting pitches, overall, that I've ever seen is Yu Darvish. Dude can fire fastballs that go straight or break a ton almost 100mph whenever he wants, can throw Sliders that act like beyblades or Frisbees, and his offspeed pitches can have frankly ridiculous breaking motions and lengths and differ wildly speed wise from pitch to pitch. It's unfortunate he's had arm issues as he's the nastiest pitcher I've ever seen. Many pitchers can throw certain pitches better than he can, but no pitcher can match his repertoire with the same elite level across the board with THAT many pitches.
When you see a batter run after he swings at a ball gets past the catcher, it's because it's strike 3. On the 3rd strike, the catcher has to catch the ball.
Pitches that look like fastballs, yet have dramatic late breaks do so due to the time it takes for the spin rate (or RPM, Rotations per Minute) of the ball to overcome its velocity. The faster the pitch, the later the break occurs. Just as well, the higher the ball’s RPM, the more dramatic the break. Put those two together (with good accuracy) and you have a devastating pitch that will make even the best hitters look silly.
The ball moves because it's not perfectly round. It has a leather covering that is sewn on and the seams are raised. The pitcher then is able to make the ball spin in unique ways causing to curve and/or drop. On the other hand, there's a way to throw the ball so there's no spin to it, a knuckleball, that floats randomly like a balloon. And yes the pitchers know exactly what they're throwing.
Watch this video again and note how many of these pitches were thrown with the pitch count in the pitchers favor. If the pitcher was behind with the count, these pitches most likely would not had been thrown in favor with a straight 4 seam fastball thrown instead. Pitch count is important more than you would think.
The red stitches that holds the 2 pieces of leather to the ball are slightly higher than the surface of the ball (the smooth surface). That and the speed of the spin provides aerodynamic resistance to the flight of the ball. To promote a greater aerodynamic resistance the pitcher will rub and squeeze the ball in the hopes of getting "higher" or more pronounced height to the stitches. Combined with various speed and axis of "rotation", the ball will move all over the place. Note the slow motion shots, the speed of the spin and the axis...plus "the knuckle ball" has NO ROTATION at all...and suddenly dies at the end. There are some. It's all in the spin.....most common pitcher injury is to the elbow.
I was a pitcher from the time I was about 11 til about 26 (played highschool then something called Federation league, which is basically just semi-organized leagues for adults, not pro or anything). I used to through a knuckle curve that, when it was working for me, would start out looking like it was going to hit a batter in the head (if they were right handed, it would look like a wild pitch way high and outside to a lefty) but then break hard over the plate. You have a rough idea of what the ball will do, so you can make minor adjustments to try and get it to start off a bit in a different location (I could start it more towards the middle, change arm angle a little and have it start off lower but with an even wider sweeping dive)...but honestly, it can be hard to control, it can change based on humidity, wind, or just bad release points etc. I didn't always have the best control, which actually worked to my advantage because the batter couldn't assume it was a curve that would break and not hit them...but my fastball maxed out in the mid/upper 80's so not bad, but not great either.
The break can depend on a lot of factors but the faster ones will tend to move later because it simply travels further (faster) before the spin causes the movement (that is a very simplistic explanation of course, but as far as I understand it, it's the gist of it)
The reason is the spinning ball finally 'grips' the air. I say grip because it is actually pressure differential. A little like an airplane wing. Without a Schlieren camera, it is hard to explain. I will try to link something later. If I can find anything . . .
I don't know how every type of pitch works exactly but the curve kinda uses the Bernoulli effect, kinda like how airplanes can fly but the forces move in different directions. The spin of the ball combines with friction of the seams and makes the air pressure different on each side of the ball depending on how it spins. If you tried to throw a curveball in outer space with no air it would just keep going in the same direction no matter how it spins.
I remember playing little league baseball when I was 8-9. Other kids on the team would say "Check the spin." They must've had much better vision than me. There's no way I could see anything more than the presence of the ball when I was at bat. That's why I didn't play longer.
Best way to explain pitching to a British guy is to compare it to golf. I've heard a lot of pitchers compare the two. It's about repeating the same mechanics over and over and making sure when you deliver your movements look exactly the same from one pitch or swing to another . This changes though depending on the type of shot or pitch your doing but the same premise applies but the delivery and movement might be different but you need to make sure your doing it in a way that makes your shot or pitch the most successful. Drop your shoulder too early, move your hips to soon or have a poor realesed point and you not going to be successful. It's all about making sure your movements are fluid, correctly timed and done in a way that has that pitch or swing be the most successful. Mechanics Mechanics Mechanics
The batter can run only on strike three and only if the ball hits the ground (so catch drops it, misses it, catches it off the bounce). A lot of batters don't even both unless it's passed ball.
So they say a batter has like fractions of a second to decide if they’re going to swing or not. So fractions of a second to recognize the pitch based on the spin. I e also heard that basically the last 15 feet or so the ball is invisible to the hitter. So by the time a hitter has committed to swinging, the ball could completely fall out of the zone and the hitter will look bad swing at something that’s out of the zone. Also, pitchers have a clue of what direction the ball will move, depending on how well it’s spun, the biggest mistake a pitcher will make is leaving a ball hanging in the zone, those usually get crushed into the seats. Or when a hitter guesses fastball and gets fastball, they hit those a long way.
Knuckleballs- The pitcher, the catcher, the batter, No one knows where its going Every other pitch they know what its going to do, but are human and can be a little off. Some breaking balls break a little more sometimes than others
Some pitchers know exactly where the ball will go better than others, but they all have an idea. If you want to see a master of control look up Greg Maddux.
Usually when the batters look stupid is with 2 strikes they are trying to protect an sitting on a certain pitch if they are wrong they look crazy. Like sitting on a fastball an its a change up they are way outfront.. An when they are late of course they are waiting a off speed pitch an its a fastball they just freeze
The pitch where the ball doesn't rotate is a knuckle ball. From the batters point of view, the ball is very difficult to predict where it is going. That is one pitch that the pitcher can't even tell you where it's going. It's a rare pitch, but if you have a good knuckle ball, you can have a long career throwing almost that pitch exclusively. BTW, knuckle balls are rarely faster than 80mph and usually not that fast.
Basically due to the spin of the ball the rate of spin and direction, the ball will curve according to how hard its thrown how many rotations per min on the spin. so Knuckleballs that have no spin float unpredictable due to it beginning effect but the air and gravty and stuff unlike with a spin, something bout aerodynamics
Everything related to sports that are specifically American would use Imperial units. Sports that are more international, like track & field might use metric. There's a YT video on identifying pitches that would help you. There are several types of pitches, and most pitchers know how to throw at least one of them, often more. The curve on the ball is deliberate, it's by which particular spin they put on the ball. The ball isn't smooth, the laces are raised slightly, so they interact with the air around the ball which affects it's flight path to the plate. The pitchers generally know where the pitch is supposed to go, unless the pitcher is throwing a knuckleball, which are generally unpredictable.
The seams on a baseball grip the air with the spin of the ball. That will cause instability. Also, baseballs are not perfectly spherical. The pitchers will use the seams and the slight imperfections of the ball, to make them curve, or slide, or drop, or go straight with a a buzzing vibration (The Heater.) Knuckle balls are thrown without spin, so the atmosphere and gravity decide where it goes. There is no way to predict where a knuckleball crosses the plate.
Except for the knuckle ball, the pitchers have a good idea of where they SHOULD go, but they are operating at the edge of what is humanly possible, so things don't always go as planned. There is no worse pitch in baseball than a breaking ball which doesn't break. The physics is all to do with spin, air pressure, and angular momentum. Again, except the knuckle ball, which ideally doesn't spin at all, and so the movement is pretty much random.
You mentioned a batter going to base on a passed ball. That can happen, but only on a third strike. If you’re scoring a game, in which you keep track of each at bat, the pitches, how far players advanced on the bases, yada yada, each time a batter is out, someone in the scoresheet gets what’s known as a ‘putout’. With a strikeout, the catcher gets the putout on the scoresheet so as you might guess, he’s got to hold on to the ball. If it gets by him on a third strike, if he gets to the ball quick enough, he can throw it to first to get the batter out, or the batter will go for first and it would be scored as reaching base on an error. It would not be an at bat that affects his batting average, either.
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Watching compilations like this really helps show just how hard it is to hit a baseball. Frankly it's a small miracle anyone ever makes contact at all 😂
When only being successful 30% of the time is considered “great”…
It's considered one of the most difficult things to do in sports.
@@eightinches3671 This is what Deion Sanders was talking about when he told Shannon Sharpe that baseball is harder to play than football.
It’s why failing at the plate 65% of the time makes you a god
The catchers that work with knuckle ball pitchers are unsung heroes.
That knuckleball that zero spin that didn't get any reaction from you was a beautiful pitch
Brits have no appreciation for knuckleballers. Only Americans, Canadians, Cubans, Mexicans, Japanese, Korean, etc. who play baseball can truly appreciate and DESPISE knuckleballs. 🤣
To answer your question about if pitchers know how the ball will move, they know exactly how it SHOULD move, but lots of variables can effect that.
They know exactly what the pitch does and where it goes when thrown perfectly, but many things can happen to prevent the ball from being thrown perfectly.
Yep, sometimes you'll hear the announcers say something like "and he has no idea where the ball is going" due to other variables like the wind, etc.
1:41 Knuckle ball - It has no spin on it so it tends to float about, tiny moves up, down, left and right. If you watch it, you can see the seams are barely moving. Those tiny moves throw off the batters perception (and the catchers) and make them really hard to hit (and catch).
The movement of breaking pitches is a complex combination of factors, but mostly the rotation you're able to get on the ball. The seams (those red stitches that hold the white leather together) create friction against the air itself as it moves. The more it rotates, the more the pitch will move. While I think the velocity dropoff does play a part in it, I'm pretty sure it's not a very large part.
Also, the one pitch you mentioned that you didn't see looked like it was a knuckleball in slow motion. That's a pitch that's thrown so that there's very little rotation, usually only about one or two rotations for the entire trip to the catcher. The idea is to create very unpredictable movement by randomizing the amount of air grabbed by the seams mid-flight. It's sadly almost completely abandoned these days.
The spin that the pitcher puts on the ball along with how he hold the ball determines the movement on the ball
I could watch those all day. Love it when you can see how the pitcher grips each type of pitch differently.
To compare it to (I assume) your favorite sport, these huge hooking curveballs are nearly identical to *that* one free kick Dimitri Payet scored a few years back. The pitcher puts enough topspin on the ball, the ball will suddenly dip down with gravity about halfway to the plate. The stitching on baseballs cause them to move way stronger compared to that of a football, as the stitching creates much more air friction on the ball.
Should also be worth mentioning that, almost every major league pitcher has a similar breaking ball, with topspin as its main feature. Meanwhile, to get topspin on a football off of set pieces… only set piece specialists can truly pull that off. Payet was just most well known simply because he was able to get an absolutely absurd amount of dip on his shots, which (and this is no coincidence) froze keepers in their tracks, just like a brutal breaking ball can freeze or choke up a batter.
The batter only gets to run after the catcher misses a third strike and first base isn't already occupied.
Each pitch works because of spin.
The more spin on one direction, the more it moves the opposite way.
Curveballs, the ones that drop down around 75ish mph work with spin on the top and sometimes side of the ball, it makes it cut down very hard and sometimes it moves to the side as well.
Sliders work with spin on the side, and give a huge sideways cut that is pretty much impossible to touch.
Each pitch is slightly different.
A pitcher throws each pitch tens of thousands of times, so they know very well how it will move.
However, sometimes they slip a little and it doesn't spin as fast, making it move less and usually ends up getting hit.
Throwing perfect pitches is something that nobody can do, it's too stressful on the arm and too difficult to get the same spin every time.
A perfect fastball every single time will tear the elbow or dislocate the shoulder very quick.
A perfect breaking ball will tear the elbow or snap a wrist.
It's not uncommon for pitchers to end their career with injury, because the arm is being used so much with so much force (the most force on the shoulder out of any sport on the planet) that it is very hard to continue using it.
The price for those injuries are usually amazing pitches, so usually the best pitchers get hurt, and it is never good to see
the amount of content your putting out on all channels is crazy. I've honestly been binging the gaming channel vids.
What makes a pitch different from the other is the grip and release, the effect increases if you manage to throw the ball harder but every pitcher can put his personal touch on the pitching mechanics as well.
There is avideo from Major League Baseball on UA-cam called what pitch was that. It talks about the science of the spin and the low and high pressure pockets above and below the ball.
I read somewhere that major league hitters have .7 seconds(not 7, but 7/10 of a second) to decide if they're going to swing at a pitch or not.
The hardest thing to do in professional sports is to hit a round ball with a round bat with the ball coming from 60 feet away at 90+ MPH, and the ball bending, dipping, rising, etc.
That's why they (both pitchers and hitters) get paid like they do.
It's much less than that. The ball reaches the catcher in just less than half a second.
You gotta watch Dock Ellis’ mini documentary! He threw a “no-no” on high on acid!!
Or Roy Halladay!!
Thank you for the great content!
With some of these, what's nasty isn't so much the amount of movement, as the fact that the movement is subtle, and late, and *just enough* to catch the edge of the strike zone on a pitch the hitter had already decided not to swing at.
Of course, sometimes a batter gets fooled but manages to correct -- which is probably the case when, for example, the batter falls to one knee but hits a home run anyway. Which has happened a few times, here's a video compilation: ua-cam.com/video/JJYtMsmkuDk/v-deo.html
The pitchers *should* know exactly how the ball will move, and they generally do, but occasionally they misfire on one and it doesn't move like it's supposed to. The exception to this is knuckleball pitchers. Rather than using spin to make the ball move, a knuckleball is thrown with as little spin as possible, which then makes it move unpredictably because of the seams and the air currents and such. This makes it hard to aim, and also hard to catch, but also very hard to hit. Unfortunately, it's also a very hard pitch to throw, and at any given time there's maybe one or two guys in the majors who are willing to actually use it in a game.
At 5:55, the pitch may have been going wide to start with, but it wasn't by much, and possibly that umpire is known for giving an extra inch or two on the outside of the plate -- there's a lot of scouting on umpire tendencies like that, and as long as the umpire is consistent from pitch to pitch over the course of a game, nobody's really going to complain.
At 7:05, that's the kind of pitch I used to feast on... but then, when I was growing up, I'd play with my dad in the backyard and due to my being rather small, my dad had a hard time throwing the ball low enough for it to be in my strike zone, so I just learned to swing the bat at high pitches like I was hitting a piñata.
At 8:05: No, the batter didn't run there, because it wasn't strike 3. Running on a wild pitch (or passed ball -- the term for when the pitch isn't wild, but the catcher still misses it) is only an option on strike 3 for the batter, though runners on base can try on other pitches.
9:00: Yeah, 60-odd MPH is about the lowest you're going to see except for the occasional "eephus" or "lob" pitch that a few pitchers will employ once or twice a season when they're out of other ideas. The reason for this is simple: if you throw slower than that with a trajectory that isn't a super-high lob, the ball will bounce before it reaches the plate 60 feet 6 inches away from the pitching rubber (18.44 meters, although this does include the pitcher's stride length.)
9:40: Yeah, you got it. Not to mention that even if you know a fastball is coming, and you know where they're aiming, it's *still* hard to hit a 100-mile-an-hour ball with a round bat and keep it in play.
10:30: Those caps you like are the Atlanta Braves. Personally I'm a fan of the Chicago Cubs and I think they have great caps too; a blue cap with red bill and red C logo.
As for how the pitches break so late, I think some of it is the speed -- a faster pitch will typically break later than a slower pitch -- but it's more just that it takes time for the air resistance to fully "catch" on the ball's spin, and of course a faster pitch will be closer to the plate by the time that happens than a slower pitch, simply because it's moving faster.
I should throw in that a good source for pitching videos is PitchingNinja; he'll do overlays of two pitches by a pitcher to show how they start off looking exactly the same and then finish over a foot apart or more (a foot is about 30cm). An example video of his can be seen here: ua-cam.com/video/zCuRW4AVtPQ/v-deo.html and he also has a twitter.
10:40.... it's not black, but Navy blue. But yes, they are one of the nicest hats in the MLB currently!
The Boston Red Sox, Detroit Tigers, New York Yankees, Seattle Mariners, Houston Astros, Cleveland Guardians (formerly Indians), and Milwaukee Brewers are the other teams who use a navy blue hat almost every game. So it's very common!
It's been proven that hitting a major league pitcher should be scientifically impossible - also 100 mph is about 160 kph
It is a testament to the robust reaction time and hand-eye coordination of humans, is what it is
Hitting a pitch from a major league pitcher? Or is it a joke I'm missing?
@@MrNinja543 no it shouldnt be possible for the human brain to process the pitch, decide whether or not to swing, tell the body to swing, and swing in time to hit the ball
@@anonymous__________________ Much less to be able to tell WHERE it's going. These guys are reading the laces on the ball as it comes in which is insane, they're seeing the rotation of the ball in the air. To be able to read the direction the ball is spinning while it's coming in at 95-100 MPH is wicked.
I wonder if people who make claims like this ever stop for a second and consider what it is they’re actually saying and the logical implications thereof. For instance, what does it actually mean to say that something “shouldn’t” be physically possible? Seriously, think about it for a minute - what does “hitting a major league pitcher shouldn’t be scientifically possible” mean? What is it really saying? Is it saying that professional baseball players have somehow developed the ability to violate the laws of physics? Is it saying that some aspect of causality becomes warped or nullified in the vicinity of pentagon-anchored diamonds? Is it saying… anything coherent at all? Well, in case it’s not clear yet, the correct answer to that last one is “no, it sure ain’t.” Put simply, the claim that “it shouldn’t be physically possible to hit a major league pitcher” is, as the saying goes, not even wrong - it’s devoid of meaning altogether. Kinda like the statement, “60% of the time, it works every time.”
Now, there’s something almost-but-not-really-well-okay-maybe-kinda-sorta similar to OP’s “fact” that actually IS true, which is that it’s physically impossible for a hitter to accurately discern where a pitch will cross the plate - and thus where and when to swing his bat - solely based on visual information (obviously there is a pitch velocity requirement here, but let’s just assume we’re talking about average ML pitchers throwing fastballs at average ML velocities - so somewhere in the 90-95mph range). Stated differently, for any given pitch there will be a moment in time at which the batter must have a. determined where & when he thinks the ball will cross the plate, b. whether or not he’s going to swing at it, and, if he is, c. cannot wait any longer and must begin the process of swinging (i.e. start sending all those action potentials to all those muscles and what not) - I believe this point is typically around 150ms after the pitcher’s release of the ball, which gives the batter ~100ms (1/10th of a second) to watch the pitch and make a swing decision (I know those numbers are at least close, but it’s possible they’re slightly off, so don’t quote me). Anyway, the important part is this: at that moment in time - the moment at which the batter must begin his swing - it is not physically possible* to accurately deduce where the ball will cross home plate based solely on his observation of the ball’s current location and flight path to that point. So, the way players actually determine the timing and location of their swing in real life is by mentally calculating an estimate or prediction, which they do using a combination of a. that fraction-of-a-second observation of the pitch, and specifically it’s flight path/trajectory, spin, and velocity; b. any information they know about the opposing pitcher, e.g. his pitch repertoire or situational tendencies; and c. the intuition and instinct they’ve accumulated over the years through the thousands and thousands of other pitches they’ve seen before.
My assumption is that this - all the reaction time/swing decision stuff I was just talking about and the research underlying it - is actually what served as the genesis for what eventually became the “fact” shared by the OP - I’m sure the OP’s source of information was an article or blog post or what have you in which the author discussed the information or the studies and research substantiating it. And, whether or not the article itself was accurate and objective, I have no doubt that, if not the author, there was some intellectually lazy/dishonest editor who came up with the ‘science proves hitting fastballs shouldn’t be physically possible’ phrasing for its sensationalism and clickbaitiness.
* I’m not clear on whether the term “not physically possible” as used here means it’s truly, literally not computable, period (i.e. even if one had all of the visually available data it would still be insufficient), or if it simply means that it’s not possible for a human to make such a calculation due either to the complexity of the problem, the small amount of processing time available, and/or our sensory inputs lacking the requisite acuity (or maybe something else entirely).
1:09 looks like the perfect knuckleball.
That's a knuckleball at 1:09. You can see the laces as the ball approaches the plate. That's why it makes such an insane break, and why it gets by the catcher.
There's another knuckleball at 1:41. It changes direction more than once on the way to the plate.
The batter can run to first if strike 3 is a pitch in the dirt, and first base is unoccupied or there are two outs.
The pitch at 8:24 is a curveball, not a sinker. A curveball is a relatively slow pitch that usually has a big break, and a sinker is a type of fastball that has a smaller break at the last fraction of a second. In this case, it was a twelve-to-six curve, which means it broke straight down. It's the 74 MPH speed and the looping path that tells you it's a curveball.
You need to watch a video on spin rate if you want to know the physics behind breaking balls.
When the ball gets by the catcher that's called a 'Passed Ball', any players currently on base can advance if warranted, only time the Batter would run on a Passed Ball if it's called Strike 3 but the ball gets past the catcher, the batter then gets another chance to get on base if not thrown out.
For whatever reason I always find arm-side movement a lot more impressive and fun to watch - it just looks so sick lol
It just looks impossible.
Love the vid. You should react to knuckleball pitchers. They are the best pitchers to watch consistently.
The pitches are mega-impressive.
The catchers snagging them are also! 🤘⚾️
Catchers should get more credit than they do, they're calling the game.
the only pitch that Pitchers cant predict the movement is on a KnuckleBall , thats the one on 1:38 . That pitch has no Spin or small amount of spin to it. Knuckleball can go left right up down with no spin at all.
If you look at the way a baseball is made, it has seams all around. The way the pitcher grips it along the seams along with the wrist/arm action determines how fast it is, what type of pitch it is, and how it breaks.
The laces on the ball effect of the flight of the ball. A lot of pitches depend on how you grip the ball, hence 4 seam fastball, 2 seam fastball, etc.
When the rotation of the ball exceeds the speed there is a tipping point where it starts to move. So a fast spinning ball that is slowing slightly as it loses velocity due to gravity and air resistance will tumble in a prescribed direction.
The movement on the different pitches is based on how the air is moving over the laces on the ball as it rotates.
There is are a couple of videos on MLB pitches the most common one's and how they work
It’s all about spin rate and the direction of the spin. Pitchers can do amazing things with a baseball if they can control or even halfway control those 2 things
Hi BG. You may have heard announcers refer to a pitch as an "Uncle Charlie" or an "Eephus." Those are names for very slow curve balls, such as that pitch you saw that went 66 miles per hour.
The physics behind the breaking balls is spin rate and how aerodynamics works with the stitches on the ball. How you hold the ball, velocity and spin rate all determine how the ball moves when pitched. And yes, the pitches know generally how the ball is going to move but it all depends on how consistent those 3 factors above are.
The only pitch I truly think pitchers don’t know where they will end up are the knuckleballers because if no spin and the erratic movement of the pitch I’d hate to try and be a catcher receiving those pitches
What's amazing here too, is almost all the batters are all-star hitters, and these pitches make them look like they don't know what they're doing. Like Brad Pitt said in "Moneyball", "How do you not get romantic about baseball?"
It's the laces on the ball that allow the spin and movement as the ball moves through the air. Where you hold the ball, how you release it and the velocity all determine how a ball will act. The weather will also impact how a ball behaves.
Pitchers have a good idea where the ball is going to go. But sometimes they might mess up the delivery and it goes somewhere other than where they want it to go.
The batter can run if it's in the dirt with 2 strikes and they don't swing.
And yes it's very difficult to hit a major league pitcher lol. Some great athletes have said it's the hardest thing to do in sports. There's a reason your considered great if you hit it only 30% of the time.
at 3:00 , he didn't just lob it. Clayton Kershaw, the pitcher that throws that ball, throws what's known as a 12-6 curve ball, meaning it has very little horizontal run, almost all vertical. he still threw that ball 75mph. He's famous for having one of the nastiest curveballs that baseball has seen. Him and Barry Zito have arguably the best 12-6's ever in the majors. All of the movement you see is based on 3 things: grip, velocity and rate of spin. different grips give you the different pitches which can be different movement. Velocity will impact the balls "run" towards or away from a hitter but the most important is rate of spin. This is more of a recent scientific discovery in the world of pitching. the higher rate of spin = nastier looking pitches. the ballis cutting through the air and once it loses a little velocity from gravity is when it stops playing pretend and starts moving with the air, that's why it seems straight and then breaks hard on some pitches like 2-seamers and sliders. You can only force it through gravity for so long until the ball has to do something with the spin, so it gives the ball movement.
edit: at 1:01 , thats Tim Wakefield, interesting back story for him but ill spare you. He was one of the most successful knuckleballers. The point of the pitch is to grip it on your knuckles and push it off versus adding spin. The lack of spin make it look like it's "dancing" to a hitter, and the catcher for that matter, which is why he missed the catch lol. It's honestly a borderline uncontrollable pitch but there are very few who ever got it down to almost perfect and Wakefield was one of them. A real work of beauty.
Clayton Kershaw’s Cooperstown curveball is ridiculous (during the regular season).
At 8:04 in the video Joe asked if the batter could run on a pitch that hit the dirt. No Joe, he couldn't. The count was 0-0. The batter could not have run unless it was strike 3 or ball 4. On strike 3 the catcher has to catch the ball without it hitting the dirt. Otherwise the catcher has to tag the batter out or throw the ball to first base for the putout. On ball 4 the batter can either run or walk to first base. If the ball bounced to the backstop a batter might take off running in the slim hope that he could make it to second base before the ball was retrieved. Any runners already on base could have tried advancing on that pitch however.
The one that you said you didnt get was a knuckleball. It's very unpredictable where it goes because of the lack of spin, very similar to a knuckleball freekick in soccer
Something that might be fun to watch is knuckleballs. They're extremely rare and only thrown by a handful of pitchers but they're the opposite of these pitches - whereas instead of using speed and spin to get movement, they're intentionally thrown with NO spin, meaning due to the seams, they knuckle and dart randomly in the air, making it impossible to know where one will go for even the pitcher/catcher, let alone hitter. A bad knuckleballer will be eaten up due to a non-moving knuckleball basically just being a 70mph fastball, but a good one can be unhittable.
you might want to watch a couple PitchingNinja videos, they're short but a must if you want so see good pitching. Usually he'll do overlays where you can see how a pitcher's pitches move relative to one another and it really drives home how hard hitting is
its the way the seams cut through the air changing the air pressure around the ball.
to answer your question, balls get away from pitchers sometimes. thats why you randomly see a batter getting hit. especially on fastballs. In general, the more velocity you have, the less control you typically have. pitchers can typically control where it's going about 90% of the time. If you ever want to verify, just look at where the catcher sets up right before the pitch is thrown. That's where the ball is supposed to be. if a catcher has to reach back across the zone, the pitcher missed his spot.
Pitchers stand above the hitter hence, the mound, therefore it's physically impossible to throw a "rising" fastball. However, from a hitters perspective, when you throw over a certain speed and high in the zone, it does look like the ball is rising but it literally can't. it's one of the most interesting things about high fastballs. they're also incredibly tough to read out of a pitchers hand.
Pitchers know what type of ball they’re going to throw, so they sort of know what movement to expect. Sometimes it works out, other times it doesn’t.
The majority of cases it’s actually the guy catching the ball deciding what is thrown and where it is thrown, because they obviously want to catch it. You rarely ever see a catcher scramble to get a ball, assuming the batter doesn’t throw it off a bit with the bat or the pitcher messing up.
7:38 is blake treinen and a former nats teammate said that 98 mph pitch is the best in baseball but he couldnt control it well enough and was traded to oakland. Disgusting pitch
When pitchers have great command of their pitches they know exactly where it is going and it is hard to make contact. Some days pitchers don't have command of their pitches and they end up walking batters or giving up hits.
the Chris Sale highlights have another aspect to them. He is so tall an lanky and throws with a looong sidearm which essentially starts in line with a left handed batter. It has got to be insanely hard to read any pitch out of that arm slot as a lefty hitter
number 41 on his jersey for boston
Pitching Ninja would be a good channel to go check out. Especialy the videos when he interviews MLB pitchers
The spin rate, grip on the ball, release point causes various movement
On a good day when pitchers have good command, they know how their pitches will go.
You should react to the fastest pitches in MLB and NCAA Baseball
Some pitchers have incredible command, meaning they can place the ball wherever they want it to go. The degree to which a pitcher can do this will vary from player to player and among pitches that pitcher has in his arsenal. You might have excellent control of your curve ball but not as good control of your slider. Every guy has a best pitch which is his go-to pitch, typically the one he can command most precisely.
Amazing movement on these pitches. You will notice that the announcers refer to pitchers setting-up a batter. So early in the at bat you throw the batter some straight fastballs on the edges of the strike zone where they could be called strikes but are usually too close to take so the batter will usually swing at them. Then later in the at bat you throw him a pitch that looks like identical to all of the fastballs that you have already thrown him, but this one breaks at the last moment and fools him because he's expecting another fastball. Also remember that the a batter has mere milliseconds to identify and react to pitch. Yes, it seems and impossibly to hit the ball consistently. But many player do. That why they get paid the big $$$.♠
Talking about the umpires - even the shi++y ones are pretty good (better than the average human) - MOST of the time! 😆😜🎉
As for the reason *why* these pitches go straight and then curve, think about it this way: The pitcher always throws the ball pretty straight (that is, you can't "throw a ball in a curve" as it is always going to start out traveling in a straight line in the instant after it leaves your hand). The spin starts creating sideways movement--that is, movement _not_ in the direction the pitcher initially threw the ball--once the ball is in the air. In physics terms, the spin gives the ball a certain amount of acceleration perpendicular to the direction it was thrown, and with that limited amount of acceleration, it takes time for a noticeable amount of sideways motion to build up.
That's why the curve gets tighter as the ball is in the air--the speed at which the ball moves away from the initial straight line in which it was thrown is not constant, but starts out very slow (especially considering the initial speed of the pitch) and speeds up. Now, it's also true that the ball slows down a bit as it gets closer to the plate, which also accentuates the curve since it has less and less forward movement "per" sideways movement, but the main reason is that the lateral speed is faster the closer you get to the plate.
Picture releasing a spinning wheel or marble on a smooth table. It starts out slipping in place, and takes a moment to speed up until it's rolling normally. (I tried to find videos of this effect on UA-cam but wasn't really sure what to look for since it just kept finding videos of people doing related physics problems _on paper._) That's basically what happens with a late-breaking pitch: The air puts some force on the ball from the outset, but that force takes time to get it moving.
@8:12 no the batter couldn’t run because it wasn’t a 3rd strike he swung at. If their were people on base then they could have ran. But bases were empty and only 1 strike in the count. The only time the batter can run is when they swing and Miss on strike 3 and the catcher misses the ball
So a few answers here. First, the batter can only run on a pitch that would otherwise be strike 3. Most of the time this means they had to swing at a pitch in the dirt that gets past the catcher AND they have to already be on 2 strikes.
Second, some of these pitches are called a "knuckleball", which you can tell based on the fact that the ball is basically not rotating at all in a slow motion shot. A knuckleball isn't subject to the usual pitching dynamics brought on by the spin, instead it can move very unpredictably since it's basically just going where the wind blows it. You'll even see the catcher not know where to move his glove because even he doesn't know where the pitch is going. The problem with throwing a knuckleball (and the reason most pitchers don't throw it) is that if you put even slightly too much spin on it, it will sort of just float there and be super easy to hit.
Third, some of these don't look like they're moving much. This is generally for two reasons, first, it was included in this compilation because it was either a really fast fastball or a really unexpected changeup. Second, the precise position of the camera used matters a lot for how obvious a pitch's movement is. Every pitch camera here is meant for a right handed pitcher, so the lefties will get a very different look. Also, if the ball breaks in the direction parallel to the camera, it won't be very obvious.
With most types of pitches, the pitcher has a good idea of where the ball is going. A few exceptions would be a knuckleball (nobody knows where they might go), a "hanging" breaking ball (sometimes a ball that is supposed to have movement at the end, doesn't. This is usually because the pitcher didn't get a tight rotation on the ball. "It slipped"), and sometimes a wind gust, from an odd direction, can cause a curve ball to actually back up, or curve the wrong direction.
They know exactly where it should go and how it should move. A hanging breaking ball is when it doesn't break as much as intended and is when hitters can do real damage
Pitching is considered the most important position. Teams have up to 10 different pitchers on the team (bullpen) at any time.
A good pitcher can shut a power hitting team down. Teams can remove and replace as many pitchers during a game.
Speed and spin rate determine breaking balls. If a hitter is successful 3 out of 10 times, or a batting average of .300, he is considered an all star. Thats how hard it is to hit a major league pitcher.
In answer to your question; pitchers know the intended location of a pitch but a pitch can miss based on may variables, such as - if their release point is off - they may not get the exact grip they've intended - fatigue. You'll hear announcers say, "That pitch missed", or, "That one stayed up in the zone." Batters love the mistakes.
A batter can only run when the catcher misses a pitch on strike 3. (If the catcher misses it's called a "passed ball." If it's the pitcher's mistake it's called a "wild pitch")
You should look for a video of Kyle Schwarbers home runs. He's still one of my favorite players even though he isn't on the Cubs anymore. I always check to see how he is doing (led the NL in HR's last season!)
Pitch types can be really hard to categorize. It varies between pitchers a lot. Some pitchers throw Sliders as fastballs and some throw them as breaking or off-speed pitches. Depends. Fastballs are generally universal, in that they are 4 seam, 2 seam, cutter, rising, split-finger, and sinker. But again a pitcher could throw a slider super hard and it'd be considered more of a fastball...especially if their slower slider is more of a sweeper.
Off-speed pitches are generally any pitch below 90mph that has significant movement. Change-ups (palm and fork can be out in here generally), Curveball (Regular, 12-6, Screwball, etc), Sliders/Sweepers, etc.
And then there is one pitch that is so random and unique that it has its own category...the Knuckle-Ball. It's slow, generally slower than all other pitches. And the best ones have no rotation/spin at all. They look like they are hovering and constantly moving randomly...like a soap bubble. If a pitcher throws an excellent Knuckle-Ball it's generally their main pitch. It's a very difficult pitch to master and can be extremely hard to hit...the issue is that when a batter is waiting for one and they get it and manage to make contact...they can go quite a long way...but usually they miss or hit them straight up in the air or straight down into the ground.
Generally pitchers excel in 1 or 2 fastballs and 1 or 2 off-speed pitches. Then there are the freaks...Tim Wakefield, R.A. Dickey, and Phil Niekro with their Knuckle Balls...and monsters of speedy fastballs like Aroldis Chapman, Jordan Hicks, Shohei Ohtani, etc.
Then the aliens...Yu Darvish and Shohei Ohtani most readily fit this description. Yu Darvish can throw over 20 different pitches at elite levels, but in a game he generally keeps it to 7-10. Shohei is very similar, which makes sense since Yu did mentor him a bit.
The pitcher with the most disgusting pitches, overall, that I've ever seen is Yu Darvish. Dude can fire fastballs that go straight or break a ton almost 100mph whenever he wants, can throw Sliders that act like beyblades or Frisbees, and his offspeed pitches can have frankly ridiculous breaking motions and lengths and differ wildly speed wise from pitch to pitch. It's unfortunate he's had arm issues as he's the nastiest pitcher I've ever seen. Many pitchers can throw certain pitches better than he can, but no pitcher can match his repertoire with the same elite level across the board with THAT many pitches.
When you see a batter run after he swings at a ball gets past the catcher, it's because it's strike 3. On the 3rd strike, the catcher has to catch the ball.
Pitches that look like fastballs, yet have dramatic late breaks do so due to the time it takes for the spin rate (or RPM, Rotations per Minute) of the ball to overcome its velocity. The faster the pitch, the later the break occurs. Just as well, the higher the ball’s RPM, the more dramatic the break. Put those two together (with good accuracy) and you have a devastating pitch that will make even the best hitters look silly.
The ball moves because it's not perfectly round. It has a leather covering that is sewn on and the seams are raised. The pitcher then is able to make the ball spin in unique ways causing to curve and/or drop. On the other hand, there's a way to throw the ball so there's no spin to it, a knuckleball, that floats randomly like a balloon. And yes the pitchers know exactly what they're throwing.
Watch this video again and note how many of these pitches were thrown with the pitch count in the pitchers favor. If the pitcher was behind with the count, these pitches most likely would not had been thrown in favor with a straight 4 seam fastball thrown instead.
Pitch count is important more than you would think.
The red stitches that holds the 2 pieces of leather to the ball are slightly higher than the surface of the ball (the smooth surface). That and the speed of the spin provides aerodynamic resistance to the flight of the ball. To promote a greater aerodynamic resistance the pitcher will rub and squeeze the ball in the hopes of getting "higher" or more pronounced height to the stitches. Combined with various speed and axis of "rotation", the ball will move all over the place. Note the slow motion shots, the speed of the spin and the axis...plus "the knuckle ball" has NO ROTATION at all...and suddenly dies at the end. There are some.
It's all in the spin.....most common pitcher injury is to the elbow.
It’s natural to like the hats with the A. It’s normal to like the best team. Welcome to BravesCountry!
The ball moves because the seams are interacting with the air and distorting the pressure around the ball
I was a pitcher from the time I was about 11 til about 26 (played highschool then something called Federation league, which is basically just semi-organized leagues for adults, not pro or anything). I used to through a knuckle curve that, when it was working for me, would start out looking like it was going to hit a batter in the head (if they were right handed, it would look like a wild pitch way high and outside to a lefty) but then break hard over the plate. You have a rough idea of what the ball will do, so you can make minor adjustments to try and get it to start off a bit in a different location (I could start it more towards the middle, change arm angle a little and have it start off lower but with an even wider sweeping dive)...but honestly, it can be hard to control, it can change based on humidity, wind, or just bad release points etc. I didn't always have the best control, which actually worked to my advantage because the batter couldn't assume it was a curve that would break and not hit them...but my fastball maxed out in the mid/upper 80's so not bad, but not great either.
The break can depend on a lot of factors but the faster ones will tend to move later because it simply travels further (faster) before the spin causes the movement (that is a very simplistic explanation of course, but as far as I understand it, it's the gist of it)
The reason is the spinning ball finally 'grips' the air. I say grip because it is actually pressure differential. A little like an airplane wing. Without a Schlieren camera, it is hard to explain. I will try to link something later. If I can find anything . . .
Here is one ua-cam.com/video/tBG-zbNIoy8/v-deo.html
I don't know how every type of pitch works exactly but the curve kinda uses the Bernoulli effect, kinda like how airplanes can fly but the forces move in different directions. The spin of the ball combines with friction of the seams and makes the air pressure different on each side of the ball depending on how it spins. If you tried to throw a curveball in outer space with no air it would just keep going in the same direction no matter how it spins.
I remember playing little league baseball when I was 8-9. Other kids on the team would say "Check the spin." They must've had much better vision than me. There's no way I could see anything more than the presence of the ball when I was at bat. That's why I didn't play longer.
This is why pitchers hide their grips behind their gloves. The way they grip the seams decides the ball's movement.
8:30, that's not a sinker. It looks like a slow curve but it also might be that pitchers change-up. Only 74 mph. A sinker looks more like a fastball.
RPM. The more spin on the ball, the more it moves. It has to do with high and low air pressure. similar concepts that deal with aircrafts and lift.
Best way to explain pitching to a British guy is to compare it to golf. I've heard a lot of pitchers compare the two. It's about repeating the same mechanics over and over and making sure when you deliver your movements look exactly the same from one pitch or swing to another . This changes though depending on the type of shot or pitch your doing but the same premise applies but the delivery and movement might be different but you need to make sure your doing it in a way that makes your shot or pitch the most successful. Drop your shoulder too early, move your hips to soon or have a poor realesed point and you not going to be successful. It's all about making sure your movements are fluid, correctly timed and done in a way that has that pitch or swing be the most successful. Mechanics Mechanics Mechanics
They know where their pitch is going for the most part.
The batter can run only on strike three and only if the ball hits the ground (so catch drops it, misses it, catches it off the bounce). A lot of batters don't even both unless it's passed ball.
oh and first base has to be open.
8:02 batter can only run on a dropped 3rd strike. It’s a weird rule
So they say a batter has like fractions of a second to decide if they’re going to swing or not. So fractions of a second to recognize the pitch based on the spin. I e also heard that basically the last 15 feet or so the ball is invisible to the hitter. So by the time a hitter has committed to swinging, the ball could completely fall out of the zone and the hitter will look bad swing at something that’s out of the zone. Also, pitchers have a clue of what direction the ball will move, depending on how well it’s spun, the biggest mistake a pitcher will make is leaving a ball hanging in the zone, those usually get crushed into the seats. Or when a hitter guesses fastball and gets fastball, they hit those a long way.
Knuckleballs- The pitcher, the catcher, the batter, No one knows where its going
Every other pitch they know what its going to do, but are human and can be a little off. Some breaking balls break a little more sometimes than others
To answer your question, the pitchers know precisely where they want the ball to go.
The best way to hit pitchers is to guess what pitch he is going to throw. It's a game of guessing between the hitter and pitcher.
Some pitchers know exactly where the ball will go better than others, but they all have an idea. If you want to see a master of control look up Greg Maddux.
Usually when the batters look stupid is with 2 strikes they are trying to protect an sitting on a certain pitch if they are wrong they look crazy. Like sitting on a fastball an its a change up they are way outfront.. An when they are late of course they are waiting a off speed pitch an its a fastball they just freeze
The pitch where the ball doesn't rotate is a knuckle ball. From the batters point of view, the ball is very difficult to predict where it is going. That is one pitch that the pitcher can't even tell you where it's going. It's a rare pitch, but if you have a good knuckle ball, you can have a long career throwing almost that pitch exclusively. BTW, knuckle balls are rarely faster than 80mph and usually not that fast.
Look at the video for weirdest pitches and pitching styles. It's wild 😂
Basically due to the spin of the ball the rate of spin and direction, the ball will curve according to how hard its thrown how many rotations per min on the spin. so Knuckleballs that have no spin float unpredictable due to it beginning effect but the air and gravty and stuff unlike with a spin, something bout aerodynamics
Batter can try running to first only on a dropped third strike
Look up Greg Maddux the man was an artist on the mound
You should watch some knuckleball pitches
Everything related to sports that are specifically American would use Imperial units. Sports that are more international, like track & field might use metric.
There's a YT video on identifying pitches that would help you. There are several types of pitches, and most pitchers know how to throw at least one of them, often more. The curve on the ball is deliberate, it's by which particular spin they put on the ball. The ball isn't smooth, the laces are raised slightly, so they interact with the air around the ball which affects it's flight path to the plate. The pitchers generally know where the pitch is supposed to go, unless the pitcher is throwing a knuckleball, which are generally unpredictable.
The seams on a baseball grip the air with the spin of the ball. That will cause instability. Also, baseballs are not perfectly spherical. The pitchers will use the seams and the slight imperfections of the ball, to make them curve, or slide, or drop, or go straight with a a buzzing vibration (The Heater.) Knuckle balls are thrown without spin, so the atmosphere and gravity decide where it goes. There is no way to predict where a knuckleball crosses the plate.
The batter is trying his hardest to not swing at these unhittable pitches. But they're so deceptive, and you only have a few milliseconds to decide.
Except for the knuckle ball, the pitchers have a good idea of where they SHOULD go, but they are operating at the edge of what is humanly possible, so things don't always go as planned. There is no worse pitch in baseball than a breaking ball which doesn't break. The physics is all to do with spin, air pressure, and angular momentum. Again, except the knuckle ball, which ideally doesn't spin at all, and so the movement is pretty much random.
You mentioned a batter going to base on a passed ball. That can happen, but only on a third strike. If you’re scoring a game, in which you keep track of each at bat, the pitches, how far players advanced on the bases, yada yada, each time a batter is out, someone in the scoresheet gets what’s known as a ‘putout’. With a strikeout, the catcher gets the putout on the scoresheet so as you might guess, he’s got to hold on to the ball. If it gets by him on a third strike, if he gets to the ball quick enough, he can throw it to first to get the batter out, or the batter will go for first and it would be scored as reaching base on an error. It would not be an at bat that affects his batting average, either.