Share your interesting baseball reads here

[Kevin Seitzer]

The record hit occurs during the 18:21-19:16 segment of the video but I think it's fun to watch the entire video. I actually thought a machine would be able to hit a ball even farther. The "bat" was spinning at 400 rpm, which they said equated to a "bat speed" of 189 mph.

The "bat" was 4 meters long (about 13 ft) but since it is a "rotor" bat only half of that length is generating the torque, so really effectively only about 6.5 ft. They didnt say what metal it was made of but I'm guessing aluminum. The bat developed a very noticeable dent at some point. They evidently hit some other types of balls w their contraption but that will be in another video.

Cool.

The very best major league batters (i.e., Giancarlo Stanton) can generate a maximum bat head speed in the range of 95-100 mph. More typical bat head speed across MLB is around 75-80 mph.

I would guess at some high enough bat speed that you would simply tear the baseball apart. It compresses an amazing amount when it's hit by a bat moving 90 mph, let alone going twice that speed (and with what appears to be significantly more mass than a regulation wood bat).

[Bene Futuis]

I guess this doesn't really go here, but not sure where to put it. Wanna watch a video of Babe Ruth's crazy swing as he strikes out? Unbelievable footage!

[Bene Futuis]

I recall our own Seitzer saying something negative about how these vintage guys would perform in today's game. I mean, after watching that swing, I have to agree. Was a pretty different game 100 years ago.

[Ken]

I think this is hilarious as well as interesting. The boys at the YT channel "How Ridiculous" used a "Batcopter" (not THAT Batcopter - a Baseball Batcopter!) to set an apparent world record for longest batted baseball:

The record hit occurs during the 18:21-19:16 segment of the video but I think it's fun to watch the entire video. I actually thought a machine would be able to hit a ball even farther. The "bat" was spinning at 400 rpm, which they said equated to a "bat speed" of 189 mph.

The "bat" was 4 meters long (about 13 ft) but since it is a "rotor" bat only half of that length is generating the torque, so really effectively only about 6.5 ft. They didnt say what metal it was made of but I'm guessing aluminum. The bat developed a very noticeable dent at some point. They evidently hit some other types of balls w their contraption but that will be in another video.

My main takeaway - dang those guys are terrible at baseball. Standing out in the field is truly dangerous for them, even with a glove on.

[Kevin Seitzer]

My main takeaway - dang those guys are terrible at baseball. Standing out in the field is truly dangerous for them, even with a glove on.

Fly balls hit by major league hitters are unlike anything I ever saw in church league softball. Tracking them in the outfield is crazy because of how fast they are moving when they come down. I can't imagine what it be like to track it coming off a machine like that one.

[Ken]

Fly balls hit by major league hitters are unlike anything I ever saw in church league softball. Tracking them in the outfield is crazy because of how fast they are moving when they come down. I can't imagine what it be like to track it coming off a machine like that one.

That's certainly the case but I wasn't referring to their tracking abilities/success as much as they way they held their gloves and flailed at the balls in several cases.

[rhd]

My main takeaway - dang those guys are terrible at baseball. Standing out in the field is truly dangerous for them, even with a glove on.

LOL. I dont think any of these guys will be appearing on my prospect list any time soon .

[rhd]

More typical bat head speed across MLB is around 75-80 mph.

Really? That's surprising. I hear people speak disparagingly of some hitters as having a "slider speed bat" so I would have thought that typical bat speed would be around 86-88 mph since this would be about avg. velo for a MLB slider. Maybe people should be using the term "curveball-speed bat" instead.

[Kevin Seitzer]

Really? That's surprising. I hear people speak disparagingly of some hitters as having a "slider speed bat" so I would have thought that typical bat speed would be around 86-88 mph since this would be about avg. velo for a MLB slider. Maybe people should be using the term "curveball-speed bat" instead.

When they say "slider bat speed" they don't mean that the bat is going forward at the same speed as the pitch is coming in, they mean that the hitter is having trouble catching up to fastballs, and that if you throw them a slower pitch (a slider), you are playing into their hands by helping them be on time. I don't like this term because I think it's confusing. It implies that the problem is that the hitter doesn't get the bat moving fast enough. I think most scouts understand there's a little more nuance to that, but I don't think most fans do.

For example, Keith Law has written in the past about Austin Riley having slider bat speed. One of the things I hate about scouts using that term is that they don't elaborate on what they're seeing, so I don't know what Keith meant by that. But it's clearly not that Riley's bat moves slowly across the plate. He has well above MLB average bat speed in terms of how fast the bat moves across the hitting zone. His exit velocities are sufficient to demonstrate this, and I'm sure Keith knows that. I would assume that he was instead talking about something like thinking that Riley's bat path was too long, that his leg kick was too big or his hands moved too far and thus prevented him from being on time against good fastball velo. I never agreed with Keith on his assessment of Riley, so I can't say for sure what he thought he saw, but I don't think he was ever claiming that Riley's bat moved too slow across the plate.

[TranaGreg]

When they say "slider bat speed" they don't mean that the bat is going forward at the same speed as the pitch is coming in, they mean that the hitter is having trouble catching up to fastballs, and that if you throw them a slower pitch (a slider), you are playing into their hands by helping them be on time. I don't like this term because I think it's confusing. It implies that the problem is that the hitter doesn't get the bat moving fast enough. I think most scouts understand there's a little more nuance to that, but I don't think most fans do.

For example, Keith Law has written in the past about Austin Riley having slider bat speed. One of the things I hate about scouts using that term is that they don't elaborate on what they're seeing, so I don't know what Keith meant by that. But it's clearly not that Riley's bat moves slowly across the plate. He has well above MLB average bat speed in terms of how fast the bat moves across the hitting zone. His exit velocities are sufficient to demonstrate this, and I'm sure Keith knows that. I would assume that he was instead talking about something like thinking that Riley's bat path was too long, that his leg kick was too big or his hands moved too far and thus prevented him from being on time against good fastball velo. I never agreed with Keith on his assessment of Riley, so I can't say for sure what he thought he saw, but I don't think he was ever claiming that Riley's bat moved too slow across the plate.

this is good stuff, thanks for the plain language explanation

[rhd]

When they say "slider bat speed" they don't mean that the bat is going forward at the same speed as the pitch is coming in, they mean that the hitter is having trouble catching up to fastballs, and that if you throw them a slower pitch (a slider), you are playing into their hands by helping them be on time. I don't like this term because I think it's confusing. It implies that the problem is that the hitter doesn't get the bat moving fast enough. I think most scouts understand there's a little more nuance to that, but I don't think most fans do.

For example, Keith Law has written in the past about Austin Riley having slider bat speed. One of the things I hate about scouts using that term is that they don't elaborate on what they're seeing, so I don't know what Keith meant by that. But it's clearly not that Riley's bat moves slowly across the plate. He has well above MLB average bat speed in terms of how fast the bat moves across the hitting zone. His exit velocities are sufficient to demonstrate this, and I'm sure Keith knows that. I would assume that he was instead talking about something like thinking that Riley's bat path was too long, that his leg kick was too big or his hands moved too far and thus prevented him from being on time against good fastball velo. I never agreed with Keith on his assessment of Riley, so I can't say for sure what he thought he saw, but I don't think he was ever claiming that Riley's bat moved too slow across the plate.

Thanx for the explanation.

BTW, how is bat speed measured? Can a radar gun do this or is more sophisticated equipment needed?

[Kevin Seitzer]

Thanx for the explanation.

BTW, how is bat speed measured? Can a radar gun do this or is more sophisticated equipment needed?

In theory it's possible to measure bat speed with a Doppler radar, since the bat definitely reflects radar. In practice the challenge is that different parts of the bat are all moving at different speeds, so you would need some sophisticated software processing to interpret that, and I haven't seen a commercial product that can do this.

Every method I've seen that measures bat speed accurately does so with high-speed video--that can be anywhere from simply an iPhone to a sophisticated markerless biomechanical tracking system.

There are also bat knob accelerometer sensors that can measure bat speed, but I've been less than impressed with their accuracy so far.

[Bene Futuis]

Not terribly related, but has anyone ever been able to tell how fast Bob Feller's fastball actually was, based on historical footage? Big Train's? Edit: Rube Waddell? Old Hoss? Al Spalding and his underhanded pitch?

[Kevin Seitzer]

Not terribly related, but has anyone ever been able to tell how fast Bob Feller's fastball actually was, based on historical footage? Big Train's? Edit: Rube Waddell? Old Hoss? Al Spalding and his underhanded pitch?

If the ball travels about 57 feet from release to catcher's glove, and you can determine that distance within about +/- 2 feet, and you are measuring from 30 frame/second video, you can get the pitch speed within about +/- 5 mph. If you have a side angle where you can more accurately determine the distance traveled, you could possibly improve the accuracy of the distance estimate and thus of the speed estimate. If the video is shot at a lower frame rate, which that Babe Ruth footage seems to be, then the accuracy would be even lower than +/- 5 mph.

[Ken]

In theory it's possible to measure bat speed with a Doppler radar, since the bat definitely reflects radar. In practice the challenge is that different parts of the bat are all moving at different speeds, so you would need some sophisticated software processing to interpret that, and I haven't seen a commercial product that can do this.

Wouldn't you just take the maximum linear speed and then adjust that via angular velocity calcs to 6 inches off the end of the bat (sweet spot is used for bat speed)?

I guess you need to know the radius for that to work, which is basically the distance between the end of the bat and the center of rotation (effectively, center of body). Hmm, that varies by bat length but also by swing type... Yeah I guess I answered my own question there, nevermind.