Reply With Quote94 mph. And I called my shot. I took it deep for a 3 run HR.
Also, I'm writing this from Japan. And I am a real-estate millionaire. And I know how to perform a deadly side suto.
As baseball season is starting I must admit my complete ignorance on the subject and wonder how a batter "waits for his pitch". He's got like .2 seconds to decide what's coming, where it's going, and whether or not to swing. And then it's gone.
I doubt I've hit anything faster than 70mph. And that was just swinging and praying.
94 mph. And I called my shot. I took it deep for a 3 run HR.
Also, I'm writing this from Japan. And I am a real-estate millionaire. And I know how to perform a deadly side suto.
He wrote from Japan at a super-high-tech-podium.Originally Posted by Ryan A
I don't really play baseball and never seriously have. I guess the fastest ball I've ever hit is whatever the fast speed is at those batting cages they have at amusement centers. Of course, those always come at just about the same angle and speed as the last one, so its mostly just adjusting your timing accordingly and has nothing to do with reading a pitch or any of that.
[Nicholson] Is there any other kind?[/Nicholson]
I've hit off of people throwing high 80's to low 90's. I've defnitely never went against someone throwing 98 mph heat. It is HARD. Contact isn't hard... getting good contact is. And that's some guy throwing fastballs at you. Hitting the off speed stuff is even rougher, especially after seeing a few fastballs first. Try it, but make sure you trust the control of the guy tossing.
Erik J.
Edit: Answering the original question, all they mean is keeping your hands back. If your hands are forward, you get less power. Hands back, then moving through the ball. Hands forward, meeting the ball, weak hit. I guess it is kinda hard to explain without showing. Also, if they are "waiting for their pitch", it also means they have an idea what they are being thrown in the first place. If the guy is expecting change up, and you throw one, you are generally screwed because that gives a lot of extra time if that is what the guy is waiting for.
Last edited by Erik J.; 03-12-2007 at 07:35 PM.
I read an article one time in Sports Illustrated that said hitting a fastball in the major leagues is one of the hardest things to do in sports. If not THE hardest.
If you've never done it before, and you had to, for whatever reason... just close your eyes and swing. You have a better chance.
Erik J.
I like going to the batting cages near me and swinging at the slow and medium speed softballs. Nice satisfying chunk 7 out of 10 swings or so.
But even the medium speed baseballs are nasty. It may not feel as manly to swing at the softballs, but at least I can drill them nicely...
A batter "waiting for his pitch" is more about a specific type of pitch and a narrowed location than literally waiting a fraction longer. In a favorable count, a hitter can ignore the pitcher's strength and focus more on looking for a pitch he's better at hitting.
I can hit the 90 mph batting cage pitches about 1/3 of the time, and anything below that 80-100% of the time. I had stopped playing baseball by the time we were old enough to be throwing at truly high speeds, so I don't know how I'd do against a real pitcher.
Right, but how does he know? He's got so little time to decide. Even if he can see the pitcher's hand, he has to be able to judge what kind of grip he had, what pitches come from it, and then he has to judge its speed (90mph or 98mph fastball?) and where it will be over home plate. Granted, some of that is unconscious, but the batter has to be consciously aware of some things.
I mean, watching pro baseball makes the 90mph fastball commonplace so it doesn't seem special. It's only when I consider the difficulty our high school gym class had when we had someone pitching who had childhood baseball experience on the mound, that I think how insane it is to even hit a basic 2-seam fastball. No curve, no drop, going straight at the strike zone. Now just imagine you're facing a pitcher with a complete arsenal of pitches - fastball, change-up, slider, and breaking ball for example. And that he plays outside the strike zone, making you chase pitches. At that point I lose my ability to even begin to comprehend how you "wait" for your pitch.
That's the essence of hitting there -- vision, timing, and simplifying things by looking for a certain kind of pitch in a certain location. If the hitter mis-IDs the pitch, that's when you get those big flailing strikeouts. Even in High Heat Baseball (where 98% of my baseball-playing experience has been), which has a pretty nice pitcher-batter interface, I could generally cream a pitch if I was looking for it (say, an inside fastball, or a backdoor slider (which the computer threw way too many of by the way)), but would be pretty lucky to get solid contact if I was just trying to handle anything (say on 2-strike counts).
That's one of the hidden aspects of baseball that a savvy announcer can really help explain; e.g. "You can guess by the hitter's body language that he's looking for a fastball outside, so the pitcher will cross him up with a curve here." Greg Maddux would have such great control and ability to read the hitter's intentions that he could set up most hitters with a pitch sequence that would end up with them predictably grounding out weakly. Legend has it that he could sit in the Braves dugout and warn his teammates when a foul ball was about to come screaming in because he knew the hitter would be too early or late on the next pitch. Supposedly some hitters (I read this about Albert Belle) are crafty enough to fake offering at a certain pitch to fool the pitcher into mis-guessing what the hitter was looking for, but in general the hitter can only guess and react.
To answer the OP, I've faced 70mph in the batting cage and was only occasionally able to ground out weakly. That was after a lot of Old Style at a Cubs game but still -- I thought I should have done better. Unfortunately watching baseball drunk doesn't lend any ability to hitting drunk.
I think about 5 mph? I struck out all the time in baseball. It was really embarassing.
I've got a (retired) major league starter in my extended family, so I can honestly say I've stood in against major league pitching. I can't honestly say I hit any of it. I was able to get bad contact against his changeup, when I knew it was coming. I could barely even see his fastball. And this was after he'd retired, so his stuff was hardly overpowering by major league standards anymore.
149 mph
... that is if Wii Sports counts?!
I once made contact with a softball with my testicles only to realize that these things aren't soft at all. Softer than a baseball perhaps, but I still cried... stupid American Passtime.
I've hit some pretty fast ones with my helmet, back, and thigh. My getting beaned was decisive in more than one game and a significant factor in many others. When I was in little league, for an entire year, I never got a hit and never struck out because I got beaned every single time I went to bat.
I got an award.
I think at the batting cages I was able to hit some 60mph balls once.
And I was sore for a week afterwards.
EDIT: oh, and that was once. Normally I have trouble with the 40mph balls.
Last edited by nKoan; 03-13-2007 at 01:17 PM.
Yeah - 20 or 30 hard swings at the batting cage, whether you connect or not, will wear you out. (Well, if you're as out of shape as me, anyways.) Swinging a baseball bat hard is not quite like swinging a golf club.
"Waiting for (his) pitch" is definitely used to describe a hitter having a pretty good idea of what the pitcher is going to throw, and then "sitting" on it. Basically, for whatever reason, the hitter knows he's about to get a certain pitch...or at least he's real sure about it. So, he "sits on it" or "waits on it", basically selling himself out versus any other pitch in expectation of a pitch the type he is looking for.
In most cases, that pitch is a fastball. Realize that for any pitcher, the pitch he's most able to throw for a strike *when he has to* is the fastball. It's the pitch he's been throwing since he was 5 years old. It's the most "natural" pitching grip and motion. The pitcher knows that, and so does the hitter. What happens when a batter is "waiting on his pitch" is that the batter has worked the count of balls and strikes into his favor. Maybe it's 3 balls, no strikes. One more outta the strike zone, and the batter's on first. Pitcher is going to come with a strike, right? What pitch is he most likely to throw for strikes? The fastball. The count doesn't always have to be that lopsided, of course, and in many cases, the batter won't take the bat off his shoulder at 3-0.
Let's look at some examples from real life, using the team I know--the Cardinals--like I know how to breathe.
First up, let's consider the case of Chris Duncan. Nice kid, tall kid, lots of power in the minors, but really inconsistent. Comes up last season for a cup of coffee, and they stick him in the #2 position in the batting order. Batting behind him is Albert Pujols, the most feared hitter in baseball. Now then, when Chris Duncan comes to bat, he knows a few things: he knows he can't really hit a good curveball, and knows that offspeed pitches tie him in knots. He's a fastball hitter, but even fastballs that a pitcher locates well, he sort of has trouble with. Chris also knows that Albert Pujols bats right after him. No pitcher is going to want to walk Chris Duncan with the feared Pujols coming up next. That's tempting fate and practically begging the baseball gods to stick 2 runs on the board against you. So Duncan knows one more thing: he knows that pitchers won't want to walk him.
Pitchers know a few things about Duncan, too. They know he has trouble with offspeed and curveball pitches. They also know he won't make good contact with a good fastball located down and away or up and in within the strike zone. They also know who bats after Duncan--the guy they have nightmares about, Albert Pujols.
So. Let's say Duncan is batting in front of an easier out. In that case, a pitcher would go up there tossing curves, changeups, and getting real cute with his fastball trying to keep it just barely in the strike zone, or even just a bit outside, hoping to get Duncan to fish at it. Duncan is in a tough spot there, because he knows that there's a weak hitter behind him, so the opposing pitcher would just as soon walk him as give him a fat pitch he can mash. If Duncan is hitting in front of a weak hitter, he's got to be looking for curveballs and changeups all the time, he's going to be off-balance when the fastball shows up, and he's going to be swinging at pitches that may or may not even be in the strike zone.
But that above paragraph is a hypothetical. Again, last season, Duncan hit in front of Albert Pujols, and that makes the bottom line pretty stark: pitchers might know how to get Chris Duncan out pretty easily....but if that first curve is a ball, and then that second fastball is just a bit outside...suddenly they're in a 2 balls, no strikes hole against Mr. Duncan, and that's no place to be against that Paul Bunyan of a kid. Make no mistake about Duncan--he's got all kinds of holes in his swing, but if you throw him a fastball in the heart of the strikezone and he's expecting that pitch, he will hit the thing into the next area code.
Duncan's a bright kid, even though he looks like he oughta be farming with Babe the Blue Ox. He knows who hits behind him, and so for most of last season, he went up to the plate, waiting on his pitch, in this case a fastball in the heart of the strikezone. He knew full well that pitchers would rather take their chances on him than have to face Pujols with a runner on base. Thus, Chris Duncan, a career .250 hitter in the minors, last year in the big leagues hit .293 with 22 homers in half a season. Waiting on your pitch is all about the situation.
Now a shorter-winded version, same team, on a national stage last season. The Cardinals and Mets are playing game 7 of the NLCS, winner goes to the World Series. The Mets have Aaron Heilman pitching in the top of the ninth. Heilman is a very solid young pitcher, with great stuff...he's got a low-90's fastball, and maybe one of the best changeups around. He's also working his second inning of relief in the rain, so maybe he's tiring a bit.
With one out, Scott Rolen comes up and has an at-bat for the ages. With the count 2-2, Rolen fouls off pitch after pitch, in an epic, 13-pitch at-bat. Down in the thirdbase coaches' box, Cardinal coach (and future manager) Jose Oquendo notices that Heilman is just pumping fastball after fastball at Rolen. No sign of that changeup. Eventually, Rolen hits one into fair territory, and singles sharply to left. That brings up light-hitting catcher Yadier Molina.
Now, you won't see this in the game broadcast, but as Molina heads to the batter's box, Oquendo calls him over and tells him that Heilman has just thrown 13 straight fastballs--hard fastballs--in a row. In his second hard inning of work. Oquendo tells the young Molina to go up there and be ready to swing at the first pitch, because Heilman is tired and going to give his arm a rest by throwing that changeup to him first pitch.
If you can, try to watch this atbat (might be painful if you're a Mets fan). Yadi is just looking dead red for that change, and Heilman obliges. I'm sure Molina was hoping for the pitch to be somewhere he could hit it for a single, but Heilman throws that change belt-high and over the plate. Molina takes this big leg-kick slow-pitch softball swing at it, and even before he's followed through on his swing, his face is split with an ear-to-ear grin. He knows he got the pitch he was waiting for, and knows he's going to give it a ride.
Wow, thanks for that write-up triggercut! That's awesome. I had no idea so much went into baseball.
Baseball can be an amazing sport once you get into the details of it, and beyond the typical reaction of "it's boring and nothing happens" of it.
I was just reading "The Last Commissioner" by Fay Vincent (baseball comish in 89-92) and reading his accounts of people like Joe DiMaggio recall games, and how they played, and pitchers that set them up for the out or how they outsmarted another pitcher.
High 70s, in a game last season. When you wonder how those guys hit the ones in the 90s, you also gotta think they arent just jumping into it, theyve built up to that speed for their whole career. Plus the hours of tape watching, to learn what the pitcher does in certain situations. Body language helps too, but a good pitcher wont show much, if any.
90mph = 132 feet per second. So the hitter has actually got almost half a second to decide.
Couldn't tell ya, otherwise. My hand-eye coordination is terrible.
A hair under .46 seconds from pitcher's mount to plate.
But it's not exactly like the batter can make his go/no go decision when the ball is 10 feet from the plate.
Keith Hernandez wrote a book back in 1995 called "Pure Baseball". I can't recommend it highly enough.
The premise of it is that Keith goes pitch-by-pitch through two actual major league ballgames (I think both are from the '93 season). Hernandez really does go into meticulous and fascinating detail on each pitch, discussing things like what the baserunners are doing, what and how the infield and outfield are positioned and whether they're correct...but mostly he goes into incredible depth on the pitcher/hitter matchup in such a way that you'll never watch a ballgame the same way again.
The best way I can describe how he changed the way I watch baseball is to draw an analogy to how I watched movies before and after I took a college film class. Understanding the how and the why of seemingly inocuous little details greatly enhances the viewing pleasure.
Triggercut, thanks for the book recommendation and all that effort you put into your posts.
I'd actually read a book about baseball written by triggercut after reading this thread. Very flowing style with a dramatic flair yet remaining to the point. You should maybe look into doing some sportswriting, as your posts are way better than anything I've read in the paper recently.
Yeah, that was good work Triggercut, pretty cool explanation and writing both.
I go to the batting cage occasionally to swing at the 90mph pitches... I'll hit maybe one out of every four strikes. I couldn't even imagine being thrown a changeup at that point, or a slider or anything more difficult to hit.
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