Played as a walk on sophomore of college. Got cut after 4 games. Went 1-17. I was great on the field. But hitting was always an issue.
The 95 mph fastball isnt really the problem if you play enough baseball. It's just timing, form and bat speed.
The problems are the 95mph fastball the fades out late or rises out the zone. Followed by the 85 curve that drops 12 inches. Then a 92mph slider that hooks out. Before you get to blink.
yep most people don't realize this aspect of the game. if all you saw was 100 mph fastballs with no movement and right over the middle of the plate, i think a lot of relatively athletic people could get the timing and swing down sooner or later. it's when you're in the batters box not knowing what is coming. it could be that 100 mph fastball with cutting or tailing movement, it could be a curveball, it could be the changeup that looks EXACTLY like a fastball out of the pitchers hand, and you have what, 0.3 seconds to react? not only that, getting the bat on the ball is one thing, but the difference between a homerun and a pop out can be literally half a centimeter difference in where the barrel of the bat hits the ball. if you're 0.1 seconds too fast on your swing you can be in front of it and hit a weak grounder to the left side, if you're 0.1 seconds too slow, you're late on it and get jammed or hit it off the end of the bat or miss it completely and you're out. to actually hit the ball hard consistently is incredibly hard. i played in college and i saw many many many good players in my time, and only 3 that i ever played with or against actually got drafted, and none of those made the majors.
hitting, beyond the physical aspect is a mental game. trying to find patterns in the pitchers release point/mechanics/pitch order etc. first pitch can be a fastball on the outside corner for a strike, 0-1, next pitch you think you have the timing down for the fastball, and the pitcher throws a slider on the outside corner, 0-2, now you've seen two equally good pitches, and either one could come next, you see the pitcher go through his motion, and it looks just like that fastball you saw earlier, same arm motion, same arm speed, you're convinced it's a fastball, you swing exactly when your body tells you that you should swing on the fastball you just saw, but you miss it by 5 feet, and realize it was a changeup. pitcher did everything the exact same as when he throws his fastball but this time he changed his grip, simply put more fingers on the ball to create more friction thus slowing the pitch down by about 8-10 mph.
gred maddux talking about it:
First, Maddux was convinced no hitter could tell the speed of a pitch with any meaningful accuracy. To demonstrate, he pointed at a road a quarter-mile away and said it was impossible to tell if a car was going 55, 65 or 75 mph unless there was another car nearby to offer a point of reference.
“You just can’t do it,” he said. Sometimes hitters can pick up differences in spin. They can identify pitches if there are different releases points or if a curveball starts with an upward hump as it leaves the pitcher’s hand. But if a pitcher can change speeds, every hitter is helpless, limited by human vision.
“Except,” Maddux said, “for that [expletive] Tony Gwynn.”
Because of this inherent ineradicable flaw in hitters, Maddux’s main goal was to “make all of my pitches look like a column of milk coming toward home plate.” Every pitch should look as close to every other as possible, all part of that “column of milk.” He honed the same release point, the same look, to all his pitches, so there was less way to know its speed — like fastball 92 mph, slider 84, changeup 76.
the art/science of hitting is truly fascinating. that's why baseball will always be the goat sport to me
