Swing experiment

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Jan 6, 2009
6,589
113
Chehalis, Wa
The additional distance is with the bat near top speed so the bat covers that distance more quickly. And all I need to do is start a beat sooner. We're talking 12" at 70-80 mph. That's almost 12 feet in a tenth of a second, so or 14" in one hundredth of a second.

Both of these hitters are hitting a HR, both could hit HR's, one is a career .300 hitter with minimal strikeouts, the other is a sub par .250 hitter and averaged a strikeout per game. Sorry there isn't more of their swings, although this does show the difference between the two.

Which hitter is quick to the ball and what hitter is applying force over a longer distance? Which hitter is the better one, left or right?

giphy.gif
 
Last edited:
Jun 8, 2016
16,118
113
Both of these hitters are hitting a HR, both could hit HR's, one is a career .300 hitter with minimal strikeouts, the other is a sub par .250 hitters and averaged a strikeout per game. Sorry there isn't more of their swings, although this does show the difference between the two.

Which hitter is quick to the ball and what hitter is applying force over a longer distance? Which hitter is the better one, left or right?

giphy.gif
Hey I was always wondering what my DD looked like as a stick figure....
 
Feb 25, 2020
953
93
Both of these hitters are hitting a HR, both could hit HR's, one is a career .300 hitter with minimal strikeouts, the other is a sub par .250 hitters and averaged a strikeout per game. Sorry there isn't more of their swings, although this does show the difference between the two.

Which hitter is quick to the ball and what hitter is applying force over a longer distance? Which hitter is the better one, left or right?

giphy.gif

I'll take the lefty! I bet he hit a lot of bombs.
 
Feb 25, 2020
953
93
The lefty hit 222 Hr’s with a career .307 batting average. He walked 588 times and struck out 444 times. He played 14 years. 7722 at bats.

The righty hit 206 HR’s with a career .246 batting average. He walked 360 times and struck out 1277 times. He played 12 years. 4233 at bats.

All that lefty was missin was some flax seed oil.
 
Jul 29, 2013
1,199
63
My question regarding the 1/100 seconds was with regards to this statement:

Unless he knows the acceleration at each point along the bat path, for the long and short bat paths, he has no way of knowing whether the longer path will have a time to contact which is 1/100 longer....One cannot just assume the different mechanics will have the same acceleration profile along the different paths. Like I said before, the way the body generates force isn't that simple. Heck the longer path in space may actually have a shorter time to contact because the body may generate force more efficiently for that path...
For a fixed impulse, the greatest acceleration will happen at the slower speed and the bat will cover the most distance at the highest speed.
If more time or acceleration distance is added, then since all bats start at zero, the one with force applied for a longer time will cover more distance at a greater speed. Averaging speed of 75mph over the last portion of the swing is simple math. 75mph is 396,000 feet per hour, or 110 feet per second, so per one hundredth of a second a bat moving at 75mph moves 1.1 feet or 13.2 inches.
13.2 inches is also the difference in distance a 80mph bat travels above what a 70mph bat travels in one hundredth of a second.
Accelerating the bat is more complicated but average acceleration is 5.33 feet per hundredth second per hundredth second for 80mph vs. 4.66/.01 sec/.01 sec for 70mph for a swing time of .15 seconds.

Regardless, here's a study regarding bat speed and accuracy to contact.
 

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