Breaking Pitches; Spin vs Speed

[FPMark]

What I always operated on, and believe to be true (not a physicist either) is that breaking pitches are the result of the rotation of the ball and is dependant on speed. For example if you can throw a 70 mph fastball that only rotates 3 or 4 revolutions before getting to the plate, it won't break. If you speed up the rotations to say 12, it will break, but to do that you have to replace mph with rpm, so it would no longer be a 70 mph pitch.

Mph is a measurement of speed relative to time/distance, and rpm is a measurement of revolutions/time. I don't know the phisics involved to map a relationship scientificaly, but I believe that they are kind of opposites in the real world. IOW the faster you throw the ball, the less time it has between the release and the plate to rotate. This also is relative to how the pitch is thrown. When throwing as fast as posible, you keep the fingers behind the ball, but when putting max spin on the ball, you are trying to keep your fingers on the ball as long as possible off the edge or around the ball to create spin.

Therefore a pitch thrown at 70 mph with a spin rpm of say 1000, may have the potential to break more than a 60 mph pitch with the same 1000 rpm spin, it will not rotate as much in the 35' usable distance between release and the batter and not have the same amount of break. This example would require you to slow down the arm to change speed without changing rpm, but once again, in the real world, you don't want to do that. What you would do is increase the spin rate which would slow the speed, so the 60 mph spin rate could be much faster. This will allow the ball to rotate faster AND have more time to do so which will result in more movement.

When I said in an earlier post that I liked to experiment with late break, this is what I meant. When you also throw in the fact that a 60 mph pitch leaves the hand at 60, and gets progressively slower on the way to the plate, the rpm's per foot goes up as mph goes down. Rpm's do not slow as fast as mph. So to throw a pitch with "late movement" you have to find the correct spin rpm that will be slower than optimal for the speed of the ball at release, but will become effective as the mph goes down just before the plate, if that makes any sense.

 

[bobbyb]

Sluggers: Now that is fascinating! Will have let this one sink in! Thank you

 

[DadofanEph]

Speaking physics...

1) No such thing as "late break". As has been mentioned, the magnus force is proportional to spin and speed, so the magnus force is strongest as the ball leaves the pitcher's hand - max spin and max speed. Hence, the ball begins deflecting off its initial direction immediately. However, what we see as "break" is actually our perception of the amount of deflection - so the longer the Magnus force acts (for a given force level) the further the ball will deflect. As someone pointed out above, distance traveled under a constant acceleration is proportional to time squared so the amount of deflection increases quickly as time passes while the ball is coming to the hitter. The longer the magnus force acts on the ball - the faster it will be moving laterally (or down) and the more lateral distance it will cover. This gives the perception of "late break", but in reality the ball starts moving laterally when it leaves the pitchers hand.
2) The debate of spin vs. speed and optimizing the amount break vs. reaction of time of the batter is complicated for us physicists. Under real conditions, the flow of air over the seams and surface of the ball is almost certainly switching between laminar (smooth) flow and turbulent flow. This "tripping" between flow regimes is hard to model has big consequences in trying to understand what will happen if one changes speed or spin rate. Under turbulent flow, the ball experiences less drag and will move more in response to the forces acting on it (this is why golf balls have dimples - to induce turbulent flow). So, ideally, one would probably choose to create turbulent flow over the ball's surface but predicting how to do that is difficult. In fact, some have hypothesized that the reason a knuckle ball dances is due to this tripping of flow regimes as the ball travels and as we know, it's thrown slowly and with little spin. My best guess is that you'd rather go for more spin, before more speed if you want more movement. Somewhere in the spin-speed mix will be the ideal combination but science can't predict that yet for softball (the golf ball design guys might be able to, since they have a ton of test data to test their models against)

 

[FPMark]

DadofanEph...Since you are a physicist, I would like to ask a couple of questions if I could.

1- Would the deflection of the ball leaving the hand be the same when thrown at 70 mph and 1000 rpm, vs. a ball thrown at 60 mph and 1000 rpm?

2- How far would a ball thrown at 70 mph have to travel to break the same amount as a ball thrown at 60 mph with the same spin? Would the distance be more or less?

3- How would the arc of the ball (deflection) compare for the 2 pitch speeds?

My guess would be that the arc of the 70 mph pitch would be greater, but also over a greater distance.

4- Since we are only concerned with the segment of the arc in the first 35 feet, how does the total arc compare to the first 35 foot segment at both pitch speeds?

 

[bobbyb]

FPMark

Have you played with this?

Nasa Curve Ball Expert

Also here is the chart of an old study that is referenced alot. There is a more detailed report by Briggs somewhere.
Ball does curve

 

[FPMark]

Thanks bobbyb, never seen it before, but that is good stuff. Acording to this curveball simulator, a 60 mph curve (with 1000 rpm spin) breaks 1 1/2" more than a 70 mph pitch with the same spin. A 50 mph pitch breaks 3 1/2" more than the 60 mph pitch. If you go to 2000 rpms, 60 breaks 2.9" more than 70, and 50 breaks 6.5" more than 60. WOW!! Of coase this is for baseball and you can't adjust the pitching distance, but hey, still cool.

 

[bobbyb]

Pretty kul tool to play with! I too wish it had a distance parameter.

It helps make this statement I read about much clearer.
"the lateral displacement is proportional to the time squared".
Heres the other briggs article fwiw
Briggs.pdf

If there is one area I think most young female pitchers don't get to progress early enough in... is the psychology of pitching and perceptions of a hitter. I feel like me and dd are behind on that to a degree. My dd learned last year what it truly meant to battle hitters...in the world series. She had heard it before but I never felt like she got it till this game. She lost the game as the hitter won out with a high wind aided home run that floated another 25 ft.

She was upset...but in that game she battled so many hitters. I don't know the pitch count but she threw alot and they fouled off alot. She was winning most of the battles but was working hard for them. She may of thrown a dozen balls that whole game. I was really proud of how she fought and she didn't even realize it till we talked about the game afterwards when she heard my thoughts on the game. It was a ah ha moment for sure.

This past year ...she learned more about pitch selection with the catcher calling the pitches and them...and the coach discussing pitches/batters more.

This off season...i want her to understand more in depth the psychology and the how, when and why's of what the batter can control, can't control, psychologically and physically. Not being confused with the late breaking ball...opens my eyes in a total new perspective to accomplishing this.

So thanks to you all!

 

[sluggers]

A pitcher wins the battle against good hitters by making a series of great pitches. She may have to make more than 5 great pitches to a good hitter. A "good" pitch is a pitch at the edge of the umpire's strike zone. A "great" pitch is a breaking pitch at the edge of the umpire's strike zone.

A good hitter is waiting for the pitcher to make a mistake and put the ball in the hitter's wheelhouse. A good hitter will also know the umpire's strike zone.

When a good hitter battles a good pitcher, the count generally gets to 2-2 or 3-2. At that point, every great pitch your DD throws requires the hitter to counter by making a great swing and fouling the ball off. If your DD doesn't make a great pitch and leaves the ball over the middle of the plate, the hitter wins. If the hitter fails to make a great swing, the hitter will strike out, ground out or pop out.

Neither the batter nor the pitcher can continually making great swings and great pitches. However, these battles can go on for 10 or 15 pitches. That really is what separates mediocre pitcher from great pitchers--how many times in a row can a pitcher throw a great pitch in a row?

One of the reason the old timers are amused by the newbies is because they don't get this. They think, "Ooh...my DD can throw a rise ball with speed and control 50% of the time. She is destined or greatness!" In reality, she isn't close to being good enough. She might get on a college team, but she'll never pitch.

Good hitters don't give up. They foul off the pitches until the pitcher makes a mistake. If a pitcher has a riseball that works only 50% of the time, that means the good hitter will win in two pitches.

A good pitcher has to be able to throw sharply breaking pitches with speed and location 99.5% of the time.

 

[Sweet Lou]

A good pitcher has to be able to throw sharply breaking pitches with speed and location 99.5% of the time.

I think this is a vast over statement. Even the best hitters "miss" bad pitches some times.

But I do agree if you want to be a top college pitcher you need to be much better than 50% with your pitches.

 

[CoachFP]

A pitcher wins the battle against good hitters by making a series of great pitches. She may have to make more than 5 great pitches to a good hitter. A "good" pitch is a pitch at the edge of the umpire's strike zone. A "great" pitch is a breaking pitch at the edge of the umpire's strike zone.

A good hitter is waiting for the pitcher to make a mistake and put the ball in the hitter's wheelhouse. A good hitter will also know the umpire's strike zone.

When a good hitter battles a good pitcher, the count generally gets to 2-2 or 3-2. At that point, every great pitch your DD throws requires the hitter to counter by making a great swing and fouling the ball off. If your DD doesn't make a great pitch and leaves the ball over the middle of the plate, the hitter wins. If the hitter fails to make a great swing, the hitter will strike out, ground out or pop out.

Neither the batter nor the pitcher can continually making great swings and great pitches. However, these battles can go on for 10 or 15 pitches. That really is what separates mediocre pitcher from great pitchers--how many times in a row can a pitcher throw a great pitch in a row?

One of the reason the old timers are amused by the newbies is because they don't get this. They think, "Ooh...my DD can throw a rise ball with speed and control 50% of the time. She is destined or greatness!" In reality, she isn't close to being good enough. She might get on a college team, but she'll never pitch.

Good hitters don't give up. They foul off the pitches until the pitcher makes a mistake. If a pitcher has a riseball that works only 50% of the time, that means the good hitter will win in two pitches.

A good pitcher has to be able to throw sharply breaking pitches with speed and location 99.5% of the time.

Sluggers you have over dramatized the scenario of good pitcher vs good hitter. The count doesn't generally get to 2-2 or 3-2. Good pitchers can get hitters to hit the ball to their fielders and can stay ahead in the count quite frequently. The nail biting stuff can happen on occasion but the better the pitcher the less that stuff happens. I can see that you have never pitched.