The direction of baseballs after they are thrown is caused by spin on the ball. Spin is defined as rotations around the axis of the baseball. Major league pitchers have clocked the spin on their pitches at 1500rpm so when a baseball is spinning through the air the threads on the ball cause a self-made “air pocket” that causes changes in direction. This is known as the Magnus affect. The spin on a baseball is defined as a vector that points on the axis’s rotation. And the magnitude of this spin vector is the number of revolutions per/sec, this is known as an angular velocity vector (Horney, A., Lowry, T., Schwenker, E., & wray, E. (2008). A New spin on baseball. Electronic Proceedings of Undergraduate Mathematics, 3(4)). All baseballs are affected by this spin and the spin is what causes the change in direction. When fastballs are thrown the spin of the ball affects the ball and makes it travel through the air at a higher velocity. It also makes the air mass beneath the ball greater and makes the air above the ball thinner. That creates lift and is what makes the ball faster and causes more speed. A curveball almost is the exact opposite of a fastball. While a fastball spins and makes the pitch fly strait a curveball spins the opposite way. The downward spin makes the air around the pitch heavy on the top and lighter on the bottom; this causes the ball to drop, or break. According to Mlb.coms game day application a typical major league pitched curveball is averaged at less than 80 mph. While the average fastball pitch is greater than 87 mph. The next data is from the curveballs of Bronson arroyo from the Cincinnati reds, and the fastballs of Josh Beckett of the Boston red socks. Although the nature of movement on a curveball su... ... middle of paper ... ... of the ball. The lift is only important to the spin of the baseball if it is a fastball because the ball creates its own lift. There are several ways in the 1920’s that pitchers use to cheat by adding friction to the balls in illegal ways. The pitchers would sometimes use pine tar, tobacco juice, or mud on the baseballs the affect the grip and friction of the ball. This caused the balls to be affected even more by the baseballs spin. Pitchers would also use lotion or file down the ball to make it smoother so that he base balls could be travel through the air faster. This was banned because it could cause the pitches to become wild and endanger the batter. Works Cited (http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/k-12/airplane/ballforce.html Horney, A., Lowry, T., Schwenker, E., & wray, E. (2008). A New spin on baseball. Electronic Proceedings of Undergraduate Mathematics, 3(4)).
Another exciting characteristic of aluminum bats is the speed at which the ball leaves the bat compared to the speed that it leaves a wooden bat. A one time representative of Louisville Slugger, J.W. MacKay, says “When a ball is traveling at 94 miles per hour as it leaves the bat, a pitcher has four milliseconds to respond…you can’t react that fast”(Palmer 2). Studies show the bats have enough power to propel balls at speeds up to 123 miles per hour, up to 30 mph faster than balls struck with wooden bats. In a memorandum written to the NCAA, Cedric W. Dempsey states that “traditional wood bats when swung at 70 miles ...
When asked to name great hitters, fans would probably mention the likes of Babe Ruth, Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle, and Ted Williams. It would not come as a surprise if they forgot to include the Georgia Peach, Ty Cobb, on their list. The reason for their forgetfulness stems from the era in which Cobb played. Beginning his career in 1905, Cobb played baseball through the period dubbed “the dead ball era.” During this era (1900-1919), players hit marginally fewer homeruns than players from other eras. The reason for this homerun shortage resulted from the baseball used at the time. Indeed, the ball had no life. Loosely wound, one baseball often served throughout an entire game. Moreover, larger ball fields also kept the homerun totals down (“1900-1919”). Legal pitches also included the spitball, a terrib...
Reds clocked his fastball at 92 miles per/hour. He a; so had a batting average
The game of baseball can be divided into three broad categories: hitting, pitching, and defense. No other facet of the game gets as much attention as hitting. For example, every year the MLB puts on a home run derby. No other part of the game draws as much attention. The traditional statistic that measure hitting ability is batting average (BA or AVG). To find a players batting averag...
A good batter will use almost all of these rotational and torque energies either before or durning contact with the ball. After contact your body is relaxed and its remaining motion is smooth, this extra motion is caused by the momentum of the bat pulling the arms up and through.Your follow through is also very important, even though the ball has already been hit it is ideal that you complete your swing so that you're not thrown off balance by that extra momentum when you start to run.
The purpose of this paper is to describe the softball swing anatomically, mechanically, and analytically. By analyzing each move one makes when...
When a person swings a bat, their arms propel the bat to a high velocity which is needed to transfer momentum to the ball and send it sailing. Also, there is a transfer of energy starting with the batter then moving from the batter's arms to the bat and then when contact is being made with the ball the energy in the bat is transferred to the ball which propels the ball forward (hopefully:)) The force that acts on the ball, as contact is being made (contact is about 1/1000sec.
When one throws a baseball properly they are using there entire body to generate a large force to propel the baseball. A general throwing position starts with a person rotated 90 degrees from there target with there throwing arm 180 degrees from the target and parallel to the ground. The person then starts rotating their body back towards their target while there throwing arm starts bending until it is almost 90 degrees to their elbow, while the arm is bending at the elbow the throwing arm is rotating such that the arm rotates back almost 180 degrees from the target. Meanwhile the person is leaping forward with the leg that was initially pointed at the target while there other leg is planted into the ground. The person is bending at their waist and the other arm is rotating into their body. Around the point where the driving leg strikes the ground the throwing arm is rotating foreword at a tremendous angular speed and the person lets go of the ball. At the point where the ball is let go the persons body pulls the planted leg forward and the throwing arm finishes its motion towards the driving leg.
The most common off speed pitch is a curve ball because it has a lot of movement if it is thrown correctly. To throw this pitch you use the same wind up but when you get to the point of throwing the ball, instead of throwing it regularly you snap your wrist to make the ball spin. In order to get a lot of movement you have to throw the ball with a little bit less velocity. It is important to be able to throw a curve ball while pitching.
With pitching there are a number of rules that need to be followed so that no foul balls are pitched. Stepping: when releasing the ball, a step needs to take (using the non-pivot foot) place at the same time as the ball is released. The step needs to be in the momentum of the pitching movement. (as the ball is being pitched you need to step). The pitcher however may not step more than +/- 60cm (24 inches) forward (it has to be within the pitchers plate).
Baseball is considered America’s past time. Legends like Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Jackie Robinson, and many more have come and gone. Throughout baseball’s history certain players have excelled more than others, and like any sport they were successful by exploiting their strengths. It isn’t the rules, uniforms, stadiums, and fan base that make baseball a beautiful sport; it’s the players. Anyone competing, whether it is at a professional level or not, has their own unique mechanics that allows them to perform the best they can. No pitcher throws the ball the same way as another and no batter hits the ball the same way as another. Every baseball player has a routine in everything they do that makes them special. It has been said that hitting a baseball is the hardest task in all of sports. To accomplish that task, all factors come in to play; the type of pitch being thrown, the release point of the pitch, the break of the ball, etc. All those factors occur before the batter’s swing is fully initiated. As mentioned earlier, no batter swings the same way as another however, the mechanics of a swing is a different thing entirely. The mechanics of one’s swing begins when a batter enters the box and ends when a batter exits, what happens in between is up to the batter. By perfecting a batter’s mechanics while in the box, their chances of making contact increase greatly.
Baseball has always been a sport of numbers. Baseball has always had the most known and most prestigious records of all sports, Hank Aaron’s homerun record, Pete Rose’s hit record, and Nolan Ryan’s strikeout total just to name a few. However, there is a growing sector of executives and analysts that argue for the game to be looked at from a different point of view. They argue from the shift from “Who will hit us the most homeruns?” to “Who can produce the most runs for us?” Baseball is arguably the most interesting sport for mathematics, and it is definitely the most interesting sport for the particular field of statistics. From the traditional gravity problems with hit and thrown balls to other force and motion problems resulting from pitches, the sport has found a way into the textbooks of many middle and high school math courses. These same people who have grown up fans of the game and students in the classroom are now the ones lobbying for the shift of perspective by the managers and executives across the major leagues towards the use of sabermetrics in their player analysis.
The sport of baseball is one that has been around in the United States since the eighteenth century, and is still played across the nation today – in backyards and in enormous sports stadiums. Though there is no proven inventor of the game, references to early variations of the game we know today as baseball date back to the 1700s. Baseball most likely holds its roots in two old English games, rounders and cricket, which were brought to New England by the colonists. From these two traditional sports, baseball was crafted, and it was a thriving pastime across the colonies by the American Revolution. It wasn’t until 1845, however, that a volunteer firefighter Alexander Joy Cartwright developed a formal code of rules which would serve as the foundation for the modern game of baseball which we know today. Since then, rules have been added and altered. Official regulations were established on matters such as bat size and the distance between the pitcher’s mound and home plate. Through out all these changes and additions, however, there has always been one set of laws which baseball followed. Whether in a little league or an MLB game, the laws of physics are constantly at play.
Americans began playing baseball on informal teams, using local rules, in the early 1800s. By the 1860s, the sport, unrivaled in popularity, was being described as America's "national pastime." Alexander Joy Cartwright of New York invented the modern baseball field in 1845. Alexander Cartwright and the members of his New York Knickerbocker Base Ball Club devised the first rules and regulations for the modern game of baseball.
"Understanding the Mechanics of Throwing a Baseball May Help Protect the Shoulder and Elbow ." Baseball Pitching. Web. 30 Apr. 2014. .