Reaction Times

[Killer Rabbit]

Alright. Here is a useless fact. A thrown softball (or was that a baseball?) loses one mile per hour for every seven feet that it travels.

[ssarge]

For example, you could soft toss a wiffle ball from one foot away and probably get a similar reaction time but a 7 year old could still hit it. On the other end, a cannon ball fired from whatever distance that would bring the reaction time to .3977 (borrowed analogy) would be impossible to track or hit.

well stated. A cannonball from 550' fired at 900mph would offer the same reaction time as a 90mph pitch released from 55 feet. Good luck hitting the cannonball, though.


One interesting point, raised on a recent Mythbusters episode, is that the impact pressure of a softball is greater than a baseball. The criteria was Finch throwing at 70 vs some college kid throwing a baseball at 90, so that wasn't quite right - 70 vs. maybe 97-98 would be more fair. But interesting nonetheless, and not unexpected when a baseball is just over 5 ozs, and a softball is over 7 ozs.

According to Mythbusters, this PROVED that hitting the softball was more difficult.

They lost me there. With a wood bat, this MIGHT be a factor. With a composite or double-walled bat, it seems to me that you WANT as violent a collision (as much pressure created) as posisble, because of the bat's trampoline effect. Probably HELPS performance.

And the test ignored the closing speed argument put forth by Gone in 2.xx, as well as the fact that the softball quite simply does not break as sharply as a baseball thrown by an elite pitcher.

That said, succeeding as a hitter in either environment is PLENTY tough, and the people who do deserve a LOT of respect.

[ssarge]

Alright. Here is a useless fact. A thrown softball (or was that a baseball?) loses one mile per hour for every seven feet that it travels.

Intuitively, that sounds about right. Meaning a softball would lose about 5mph from a 35' release point, and a baseball a little less than 8mph. Chips away at a 30mph delta, but not meaningfully.

I DO suspect the physics of it are actualy not quite that simple. The loss of velocity would accelerate over time, I think - it is not totally linear. Kind of like the effect of gravity being 32 feet per second / per second.

Best regards,

Scott

[PDad]

I DO suspect the physics of it are actualy not quite that simple. The loss of velocity would accelerate over time, I think - it is not totally linear. Kind of like the effect of gravity being 32 feet per second / per second.

You're right that it isn't linear, but the loss of velocity would decelerate over time because air resistance is a function of the velocity squared. This is why a falling object will reach a terminal velocity when the force of the drag overcomes the force of gravity.

[PDad]

However, what virtually all comparisons do wrong (IMO, anyway) is assume the distance from the rubber to the plate to make the comparison (front of rubber to back of plate, actually). So, 40 or 43 feet in FP, 60' 6" in baseball. An accurate measurement would actually compare release points. Probably something like 55' in baseball, and maybe 36' in elite FP (assuming a 43' rubber).

That was the point I made in my first post. You also need to subtract the distance from the other end since batters try to hit the ball before it gets to the back of home plate. I used a total of 8 feet in my example because I didn't want to get bogged down trying to get it down to the inch.

[Sparky Guy]

I wrote a little app a few years back to compute the reaction time and compare speeds to a baseball pitched at 60 ft. My math is off slightly. I had a brain fart when I coded it and set the baseball pitching distance at 60' instead of the correct 60.5'. I also did not factor in the resistance and speed drop over distance. My math skills are not quite that strong.

Given PDad's subtraction for release point and hitter contact point I plugged the numbers in and came up with this. A 60 mph softball pitch thrown from 35' gives the hitter 0.39 seconds to react with the equivelant being a 102 mph from 60'.

Unfortunately I lost the source code and can't change the pitching distance for baseball to reflect a more accurate reaction time.

[ssarge]

You're right that it isn't linear, but the loss of velocity would decelerate over time because air resistance is a function of the velocity squared. This is why a falling object will reach a terminal velocity when the force of the drag overcomes the force of gravity.

Interesting, thanks.

[DunninLA]

Hey all,

Most posts like this severely UNDERESTIMATE how fast a fastpitch ball reaches the batter compared to Major League Baseball pitch.

From the below basic math, we see that the time from hand release to the front tip of home plate (not really the same as reaction time, but related) is the same in Fastpitch and Baseball as follows:

Baseball 114 mph = Fastpitch 75 mph -- .332 seconds from release to plate in both
Baseball 110 mph = Fastpitch 72 mph -- .344 seconds from release to plate in both
Baseball 105 mph = Fastpitch 69 mph -- .360 seconds from release to plate in both
Baseball 100 mph = Fastpitch 66 mph -- .378 seconds from release to plate in both

Clearly Fastpitch affords about 10% LESS reaction to the batter on a FAST pitcher (100mph baseball vs. 75 mph Fastpitch), and I think in general we can say a Fastpitch batter has 10% less reaction time.

However, a fastpitch batter is swinging at a larger ball, and the time the ball is in a hittable zone (2' in front of the plate to the back edge of the plate) is typically 35 - 45% longer in fastpitch than in baseball.

Here are the comparisons and the basic math formulas used in excel:


MPH / Ft/Sec / # Feet / Secs From Release to Front of Plate

MLB
114 164.7 54.6 0.332
113 163.2 54.6 0.335
112 161.8 54.6 0.338
111 160.3 54.6 0.341
110 158.9 54.6 0.344
107 154.6 54.6 0.353
105 151.7 54.6 0.360
102 147.3 54.6 0.371
101 145.9 54.6 0.374
100 144.4 54.6 0.378
99 143.0 54.6 0.382
98 141.6 54.6 0.386
97 140.1 54.6 0.390
96 138.7 54.6 0.394
95 137.2 54.6 0.398
94 135.8 54.6 0.402
93 134.3 54.6 0.406
92 132.9 54.6 0.411
91 131.4 54.6 0.415
90 130.0 54.6 0.420
87 125.7 54.6 0.434
85 122.8 54.6 0.445

Fastpitch
75 108.3 36 0.332
74 106.9 36 0.337
73 105.4 36 0.341
72 104.0 36 0.346
71 102.6 36 0.351
70 101.1 36 0.356
69 99.7 36 0.361
68 98.2 36 0.367
67 96.8 36 0.372
66 95.3 36 0.378
65 93.9 36 0.383
62 89.6 36 0.402
60 86.7 36 0.415

Formulas:
Miles per hour converted to feet per second: mph*5200/3600
# Feet MLB: 60.6 - 5 foot stride to release point, - 1foot to front of plate
# Feet Fastpitch: 43 - 6 foot stride - 1 foot to front of plate
Seconds to Plate: # Feet / Ft per Second

[Killer Rabbit]

Uh..what is the meaning of life?

[DunninLA]

Killer Rabbit -- how much time to I have to react to that question?