How To Be The Best Baseball Player

So what does it take to be the best baseball player? #smartypants #dropout #presentation

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[brethitmanshart]

ty cobb doing it 4/10 times was considered the best hitting season of all time

[RicoLoco]

As someone who knows mainly just the basics of baseball, this is the best explanation layman's explanation of what a batting average represents that I have heard and understood.

[alexhutton]

I love how this video — and the entire segment on the full episode — are just a room full of people who don't know sports being unsure how to react and the one sports fan in the room (Raph) loving every single second of it.

[swimbutsu]

That is extremely impressive, but the reaction time as given is a little misleading. The ball doesn't just pop into existence, you're watching the pitcher wind up and throw. So you're readying your swing before the ball leaves their hand. Still, hitting a fist sized ball, going 90+ miles per hour, that you have to track on the fly, with a bat only a couple inches in diameter is hard as hell.

[GardensAndGames]

I mean, if an actor booked 3 out of every 10 auditions they went on, they would be pretty awesome

[redbelt]

Lets all remember something crazy about baseball.
TEDD WILLIAMS who flew FIGHTER PLANES after being drafted into war had almost beyond perfect vision.

This man has one of the only 40% seasons. Yes, 40 freaking percent and is hailed as an all time great

[bbott]

Every team has guys who throw 100+ now too. So against those guys the reaction times are even harder to deal with.

[nixx]

The speed distance calculation doesn’t take into account the release point of the ball which is often closer to 55 than it is 60.

Doesn’t take into account the idea of pitches in the same “tunnel”. Pitches that look the same out of the hand before making drastically different movement to drop, rise, sweep, slide, curve, zig or zag.

Doesn’t take into account that the 3/10 is the number per at bat (essentially round of hitting) and not each individual pitch. 3.88 is the average number for 2024.

So that 3/10 is closer to hitting 3 out of every 38 pitches over the course of 10 at bats.

[aidenpostema]

Ty for explaining why baseball is so much more difficult then people give it credit for

[ericherde]

Even lower than 3/10, since that doesn’t take into account the multiple pitches per at-bat.

[mothafraker]

Hitting a baseball is one of the most difficult things to do in all of sports.

[cbjueueiwyru]

This is why Aaron judge's strategy of getting into the zone right away by flipping the bat backwards gives him such a high batting average

[OctagonalSquare]

Reminder that in that short window of time, they are processing:
How fast it’s coming in
It’s trajectory
The spin of the ball to know if it will break/curve
How they need to step to get the best swing angle for the place the ball will cross the plate at

[ethanfields]

I've always heard that hitting a baseball is the single most difficult thing to do in sports.

[hesh]

It’s just crazy that the ball can start the first half of its travel in the same chute for the beginning of its trip, and end in a completely different location by the end of the pitch.

Same guy. Same arm slot. Same beginning trajectory. 4-seam, cutter, splitter, changeup. 4 different areas of completion.

Starts the same 60’ from the plate. Looks the same 40’. Ends up anywhere on or off the plate they choose.

[jesuschrist]

Now let’s take a look at Shohei Ohtani. Because the dude is not human. 54 homeruns and 54 Stolen bases in a single season is unheard of. He founded the 50/50 club a couple weeks ago. And the sound his bat makes when it hits a ball…. Oh man. It’s like an axe splitting the ball in two.

[sporer_]

Baseball diehard here and I love this explanation to what appear to be novice fans of the game. Really helps underscore how difficult hitting truly is

[ShakespeareanB.I.G.]

It is widely considered, (in the US, at least) that hitting a baseball at the professional level is the single hardest thing to do in sports.

[THExMETAL]

Hitting a fast ball down center plate is proven to be one of the hardest things to do in any sport there are very few things in sports across the world that scientifically are harder to pull off

[sixstringedthing]

As an interesting comparison, consider being a batsman in professional Cricket. The ball is released from roughly the same distance (around 60ft). The balls weigh pretty much the same (5.25-5.75 ounces when new) but the cricket ball is smaller and denser. But then again, the physical differences between pitching and bowling actions results in the fastest deliveries in both sports also being about the same, around the 100mph mark.

A pitcher tries to disguise how they're going to throw and can deliver curveballs etc., a bowler is allowed to bounce the ball off the pitch after imparting various types of spin to change the post-bounce trajectory in exciting ways.

A batsman gets to use a wider/flatter bat and doesn't have to swing at every ball, but the whole point is to prevent the bails from getting knocked off the top of the stumps located behind you, which means that if you miss your shot there's a pretty high chance that part of your body is going to painfully end up between the stumps and the fast moving ball.

TL;DR - Pro batsmen have incredible dexterity and reaction times, and they are also a little bit mad. I've only ever faced down far slower deliveries in friendly matches, and it's still pretty goddamn alarming when your eye loses the ball and you basically just have to hope that you don't get clouted. Hence the unwritten Australian law that backyard/beach cricket may only be played with tennis balls.