Wednesday, April 4, 2007

ScienceDaily: The Psychology Of Baseball

ScienceDaily: The Psychology Of Baseball: "Arizona State's Rob Gray has used a virtual hitting simulation -- something he describes as a 'purposefully simplified' video game -- to help determine what cues help hitters make contact with the ball. In a 2002 study, he varied the speeds of the virtual ball randomly from about 70 to 80 m.p.h., and hitters failed miserably, with batting averages of about 0.030. That'll get you cut from a T-ball team. But in the same simulation, hitters fared much better -- with batting averages of 0.120 -- when pitches were thrown at just two different speeds: slow (75 m.p.h.) or fast (85 m.p.h.). It's the randomness, not an over-powering fastball, that fools hitters. Gray's conclusion: 'It is clear that successful batting is nearly impossible in the situation in which pitch speed is random and in which no auxiliary cues (e.g., pitcher's arm motion or pitch count) are available to the batter.'"
If the Cubs could try this maybe they'd have a pitching staff this year.

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