What to Asterisk? *

[nanwynnfan]

Originally Posted by kflo

another rather absurd

Thanks for a great belly laugh ... that's all I really had to see to realizes that your mind has been bronzed: You persist with poor usage as steadfastly as you adhere to flawed, repetitive arguments. [Yet another "rather absurd."]

Do you honestly suppose that one who posts on physics of bat speed and ball distance is devoid of knowledge of backspin, atmosphere or other modifiers?

Like I said, I've had about enough of the Bonds, Giambi, Conseco, Palmeiro, Selig, Mitchell cluster*&%#; so future responses on this topic will find me only as a passive onlooker. Just don't want to be the mugged innocent bystander, stuffed into a Colorado humidor.

[kflo]

Originally Posted by nanwynnfan

Thanks for a great belly laugh ... that's all I really had to see to realizes that your mind has been bronzed: You persist with poor usage as steadfastly as you adhere to flawed, repetitive arguments. [Yet another "rather absurd."]

it was intended to give you a laugh. not that i have any problem whatsoever using rather absurd. you're objection to it is rather absurd, actually. but whatever.

as for my arguments, you don't address them. you simply rationalize the actions of the steroid users. i place blame at the feet of all of them, the clean players, the dirty players, the players union, the commish, the owners, the fans. you absolve the dirty players. i don't. you trivialize the impact of steroids. i don't. you gloss over that which you are uncomfortable with.

Originally Posted by nanwynnfan

Do you honestly suppose that one who posts on physics of bat speed and ball distance is devoid of knowledge of backspin, atmosphere or other modifiers?

i honestly suppose that you are for some reason downplaying the impact of steroids.

Originally Posted by nanwynnfan

Like I said, I've had about enough of the Bonds, Giambi, Conseco, Palmeiro, Selig, Mitchell cluster*&%#; so future responses on this topic will find me only as a passive onlooker. Just don't want to be the mugged innocent bystander, stuffed into a Colorado humidor.

you apparently haven't had enough, as you continue to rationalize their steroid use, and apologize for their steroid use, and minimize the impact of their steroid use, in thread after thread, post after post.

[jtur88]

Just an aside, but it appeared in this thread, so:

" . . ."such that a well > average bat speed hitter, starting out at 7O+ mph, . . "

The other night I was watching the baseball episode of "Mythbusters", and Adam Savage's bat speed was clocked at 65 mph. And he swings like a girl. What is the average bat speed of a guy off the street who might have played a bit of ball as a kid? Is there tlat little differential between MY bat speed and that of, say, Elijah Dukes?

[nanwynnfan]

I'll respond to that jtur posit simply because there have been so many arguments over bat speed, contact force, force dissipation and exhaustion ... and all culminating in debates over the maximum distance a human being [prime MLB batter] can possibly hit a pitched baseball.

We've all heard of the Mickey Mantle blast alleged to be @ 565' and there are MLB parks with painted seats to mark remorable HRs that struck them; they serve as measured, verified "distance" markers.

I've been guided by two elemental speed factors, at least one of which is considered a relative "given" - the speed of a pitched baseball.

Tiger pitcher Joel Zumaya, @ 103 mph is NOT my model. I default to 80 mph because it is the speed of the pitched baseball at the instant it collides with the forward-moving bat that counts in the equation.

So, a pitched baseball, at that instant, will be a bit below its release speed of 85, 90, 100, 105 mph; and not all pitches are fastballs, so 80 mph seems areasonable figure.

Having read Dr. Adair's book on the physics of baseball and other paper on the subject, I get the simplified, elemental formula that impact speed is comprised of two elements:

-the pitched ball forward speed at impact mutiplied by a factor of .25, so that 80 mph * .25 contributes 20 mph to collision force;

-the bat speed contributes a factor of 1.2, so that a bat speed of 70 mph contributes 70 * 1.2 or 84 mph to collision force, the sum in this case being 20 [ball] + 84 [bat] or 104 mph. [I would refer those who would question of bat spped to Dr, Adair's "The Physics of baseball," pages 29-34 ... and page 37, with Ted Williams as primary model.

-the second factor is the immediate dissipation of the forces of both bat and ball the instant after contact, which is tremendous. If the ball leaves the bat at 104 mph contact speed, as any fan knows, even the most vicious line drive travelling far enough to be a HR will enter the stands as a speed far less than 104 mph, more like 40-60 mph, enough to make surprised fans scatter, with the more resolute getting a souvenir [aided maybe by a glove].

-the arc of the drive and gravity work on the forward flight speed of the batted ball's flight, a rainmaker high drive might drop into the seats with as little forward speed as 10-25 miles per hour, a moderate drive @ 25-35 mph, and a vicious liner > 35 mph. That final speed at descent, averaged with initial blast-off speed gives a solid rule-of-thumb means of calculating average forward speed of batted balls over the course of their trip.

-the final element in distance is flight time; and although some very high "blasts" seem to hang up there forever, the fact is that 5 seconds is about max for a very high arcing blast with a final descent speed of @ 15-25 mph.

If we take our 104 mph contact shot with that final descent speed of 25 mph and a hang time of 4.2 seconds, we have a batted ball travelling 397.'

If a trailing breeze adds a tenth of a second to the flight, it'll go @ 407'.

If a batter with bat speed of 74 mph strikes the same ball with the same trailing breeze, he'll get 422' aided by a split second of added flight time and bat speed.

I used 70 mph as my base > average, talented batter example for a number of reasons:

-NOT to underestimate bat speed contributions in equations;[also considered Dr. Adair to be pretty darn knowlegeable; and took into consideration bat weights, woods, etc, sine Ted's prime];

-show how hard it is to improve on excellence ... spinach etc. will not jump start bat speed at the highest levels of performance by very much, even 7% may be too generous;

At the bottom line, physicists and mathematicians who have studied this far more deeply than I have "capped" maximum HR batted-ball distance by a gifted human being @ 475' [conservatively] to 515' [generously] with neutral atmosphere and maximum ball bat contact contributions.

I'd have guessed a bit further, but an idealized example seems to bear Dr. Adair [@ 500'] out:

-Pitched ball @ 100 mph [release and start @ 103-105 mph] * .25 = 25 mph

-Bat speed 80 mph [Clark Kent emerging from phone booth] @ 80 mph * 1.2 = 96 mph;

-Collision force [speed] 25 + 96 = 121 mph;

-Lower type liner, flight time @ 4.4 seconds ...= 519.49'.

[Maybe the guy on tv was swinging an aluminum bat]. Another consideration is the non-linearity of bat speed augmentation, the jump from 55, 60, 65 mph being geometric, not arithmetic. This would be supported by small returns on maximum effort among the very best.

[WilsonC]

Originally Posted by kflo

i place blame at the feet of all of them, the clean players, the dirty players, the players union, the commish, the owners, the fans.

What's interesting is that while a lot is made of the players who are believed to have used steroids and assumptions are made as to the degree of the advantage that gives them over past players when looking at records, there is vercomparatively little said about the degree of disadvantage today's clean players have in comparisson to the past greats. If a player does gain an appreciable advantage for having used steroids, and we know that at least a considerable percentage of players did use them, then a corrolory of that would be a considerably more difficult league for the current clean players than past greats would have faced. A clean player in the so-called "steroid era" not only made the right decision on a difficult choice that past idols didn't have to face, but in making that decision he puts himself at a disadvantage relative to the league - or at least to whatever degree steroids actually help.

[Triad]

Originally Posted by kflo

you could argue the harder you swing, the less often you make contact. but better bat speed in itself is an asset. and allows you to make more frequent contact.

Then how do you explain that the players with the most bat speed tend to be those who strike out the most?

Originally Posted by kflo

one of the first things to go that contributes to the decline phase for hitters is bat speed.

And do hitters usually strike out more as this process unfolds?

Originally Posted by kflo

you seem to want to continue to go back to an argument questioning whether steroids aided players. it did. just move past that line.

You quoted what I said about the corresponding rises in HR of Rodriguez and Griffey, and then you don't even say anything about it. I'm presenting an argument, and you're just glossing over it. If my analysis is bad, then tell me why it's bad. But if you don't have a rebuttal, then it tells me that you haven't considered it.

[kflo]

Originally Posted by Triad

Then how do you explain that the players with the most bat speed tend to be those who strike out the most?

players who swing hardest tend to strike out the most. i'll make this simple. if you could generate the same bat speed by not swinging as hard, do you think that could improve your ability to hit the ball?

is slow bat speed an asset or a liability?

Originally Posted by Triad

And do hitters usually strike out more as this process unfolds?

as your bat speed slows, your ability to make contact is diminshed. you need to compensate. commit earlier. it's a liability. obviously.

Originally Posted by Triad

You quoted what I said about the corresponding rises in HR of Rodriguez and Griffey, and then you don't even say anything about it. I'm presenting an argument, and you're just glossing over it. If my analysis is bad, then tell me why it's bad. But if you don't have a rebuttal, then it tells me that you haven't considered it.

you didn't present any analysis. you asked if griffey and arod benefited from their era. they of course benefit from smaller parks, lower mounds, advances in fitness and knowledge. there are other factors as well, including expansion, specialized and situational pitchers, travel, pitchers on ped's, etc.

what this doesn't address, though, is whether steroids help a hitter. and that answer remains yes.

[jtur88]

RE: bat speed and physics. One distance that is known is center field in the Polo Grounds, officially listed at 475, but variously reported to be as much as 505 at the corners. A ball going over would presumabably be at least 500 to grade level bounce, since the wall was pretty high--more than 20 feet. The history of balls going over seem to defy the physics, or at least suggest some other factorl. Schoolboy Rowe, a big good-hitting rookie pitcher, hit one over in BP, presumably not of a 100-mph fastball, and he may have been using a doctored bat. Joe Adcock's first MLB drive over the wall came off Jim Hearn, who was known as a control pitcher with a great sinker and a history of arm trouble, so I doubt if his fastball had blinding speed. Adcock, with very long arms, must have had great bat speed. A Milwaukee writer once reported that he counted 76 balls hit over 400 feet by Adcock in one season---nearly all caught in straightaway center field.

[nanwynnfan]

As a NY kid growing up, I saw games at the Polo Grounds when the actual distance was 505' with steps leading up to the clubhouse and then the clubhouse structure topped by the clocktower.

However, that was a maximum distance reached, with periods where the dead CF dimension fluctuated a great deal.

When Schoolboy Rowe was rookie, CF actually was at one of its shortest measurements at 430' from home plate. So, according to the physics already mentioned, a 70 mph bat speed on an 80 mph pitch sailing a flight time of 4.4 seconds and we would have an estimated drive of 448.5' clearing the tarp wall and landing almost 20 feet beyond.

Also, without having any specific data to support it, the fact is that the various incarnations of the Polo Grounds were built on a piece of land called Coogan's Bluff, so the layout might well lend itself to catching prevailing breezes or winds that might on some days favor hitters.

Here's a fairly cool site that measures and itemizes all HR's hit in the MLB season. Not how the Speed Off Bat comports well with the formula provided:

Bat Speed * 1.2 + Pitch Speed *.25

["average" bat @ 65-70 *1.2] = 67.5* 1.2 = 81
["average" pitch @ 80= = 80*.25] =20 .... sum =101

Link to HR measurement site: HitTracker :: Home run tracking and distance measurement

[djwhokid]

What a silly thread.

An asterisk? If you are going to put an * after every record of alleged performance enhancement then you need to go back in the era of Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb and put an * on their records because all the best players were locked away in the negro league.

Come on. Competing in a sport without black people is like saying a black person had the highest SAT score when no Asian students took the test.

No *... that is just absurd.

[nanwynnfan]

Originally Posted by djwhokid

What a silly thread.

An asterisk? If you are going to put an * after every record of alleged performance enhancement then you need to go back in the era of Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb and put an * on their records because all the best players were locked away in the negro league.

Come on. Competing in a sport without black people is like saying a black person had the highest SAT score when no Asian students took the test.

No *... that is just absurd.

What is ABSURD is your statement that "all the best players were locked away in the negro league."

Yes, the negro leagues [as they were called then] did have a number of super stars who would have made the big leagues had the competition been open; and several of these would have excelled.

However, you don't presume that MLB prior to 1947 was a collective minor league of also rans with a superior class banned from competition.

Proof? Take any credible study of the best who ever played at the MLB level in the modern age [1901-present], and the list of perhaps a hundred or mor will have a solid distribution of black players indeed. However, they do not displace or replace players [even sabermetrically reconstituted ones] who played the game before, during and after the ban, who wer just clearly "the best."

I do agree regarding the *. Leave it where it belongs, with the grammarians and editors.

[hookahman]

I say let all of them take steroids or HGH. When taken correctly steroids and HGH do not harm the human body, that is fact. Thats why all of these players were taking this stuff after injuries to get back faster and then were hooked. There needs to be doctors in every clubhouse with a physical trainer giving steroids to the players the correct way. The U.S. is the only country in the world where steroids are illegal. Seems to me we need to catch up with the world in another category.

Smoke one time for steroids.

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