Hitting a Baseball

By: Zach Forman, Luke Robinson, and Gray Richardson

It’s the hardest thing to do in sports. You have one tenth of a second to do three things. Figure out where the pitch will land. Is it a strike or ball and to swing or not. If you're wondering what we’re talking about, well here is your answer. Hitting. Have you ever wondered how hard it is to hit a baseball? Well this is a complicated concept. There are many things that go into making contact with a ball that goes faster than a speeding car on a highway.

First, the average MLB pitcher can throw a baseball at 92-93 mph. That is extremely fast. As fast as a blink of an eye in fact.

Now, you probably think that's not hard since some pitchers now-a-days have thrown over 97-102 mph. Yet Still, any pitch in the 90s is a struggle in clear sight. Not all pitches have to be fast to fool a player. This pitch is called a breaking ball. A breaking ball is descended to fool a hitter’s eyes and recognition of the pitch. If you see a fastball coming, it might break into the curveball, a pitch that approaches the plate downwards and with some curve. Some pitchers use the strategy called tunneling. Tunneling is when a pitcher might locate the opposite pitch in the same starting position, pitcher throws an away slider to a right batter, in the middle of the box, then they might throw a sinker in the middle of the box, but going to the left side. It makes the batter fooled and makes his job much, much harder.

The breaking ball has its name because it breaks (breaks means drops aggressively or slides over aggressively). Pitchers can throw a breaking ball by changing their grip or the way they throw it. Most players know when it’s a fastball or breaking ball based on the spin, but what makes it so hard to hit is the change of direction. For example, the curveball could go down or down to the side, this tricks the batter to swing one direction and the ball to go the other way. Another pitch is the slider. The slider as the name suggests it is supposed to slide (meaning roll or go sideways) one direction and either be out of your reach or jam you up so you can’t hit it. The last pitch is the slurve. The slurve is a combination between a slider and a curveball. It is meant to curve downward like a curve and slide like a slider, hence the name. This is by far the hardest pitch to hit when it is thrown correctly.

The fastball has its name because it’s meant to speed by you and can get up to 102 mph which is faster than a car on a highway. The fastball is one of the most popular pitches amongst all pitchers. It can be thrown any direction at any speed and still be reliable (that is until Kyle Shwarber is batting and he blasts one to deep right-center field!). There are two main types of fastballs, the two seam-fastball and the four seam-fastball. The two seam fastball slides just the slightest bit to the direction and side of the pitcher's arm. (For example, If a righty pitcher is facing a righty batter, the ball would slide toward the batter.) This can lead to complete miscalculation by the hitter. The four seam on the other hand goes straight and can really be placed anywhere in the strike zone.

It takes years and years and years of hard work and practice to perfect the art of hitting and still it can’t be perfected. The best fail 3 out of 10 times at their job. (That would get you kicked out of pretty much any other profession!) This plus all the other reasons we had stated are all the reasons why hitting a baseball is the hardest thing to do in the sports world.