This article explains how the different pitches thrown by pitchers in baseball are driven by scientific principles, such as Bernoulli’s Law, and discusses their impact on the game. It explores the complexity of pitching and the different characteristics of different pitchers’ changeups, emphasising that baseball is a scientifically complex sport.
From a young age, I had a keen interest in professional baseball. At home, I would wear sweatpants every day and get scolded by my mother for sliding, and I broke things when I threw balls against the wall. Outside, I remember playing baseball on the playground all the time, depending on the season, with my friends, and of course during professional sports seasons. Now that I don’t get to play baseball as much as I used to, I find vicarious satisfaction in watching it. Whereas as a kid, it was just throwing, catching, hitting, and running, I now think about the science behind it and anticipate the many plays.
But how many people realise that baseball is a very scientific sport? ‘Baseball is a pitcher’s game’ is a very popular saying. This means that if the pitcher pitches well, they have a very good chance of winning the game. The flip side of this is that no matter how strong your batting lineup is, if you don’t have a strong mound, you’re not going to win. The role of the pitcher in baseball is very important, as the teams with the best pitchers often win the championship.
So, what makes a good pitcher? Simply put, it’s one who uses science. The distance from the mound to home plate is 18.44 metres. The time it takes for a ball thrown by a pitcher to cross this distance is about 0.4 seconds, which is less than the blink of an eye. Let’s take a look at what happens in this brief moment.
There are many different types of pitches that pitchers throw. Starting pitchers benefit from having a variety of pitches to get ahead in the count battle with hitters. Closers, on the other hand, who are responsible for the last inning or two of a game, need a fastball to overpower hitters. The most commonly recognised pitches include fastballs, sliders, curves, and changeups, which many pitchers can throw. However, splitters, cutters, forkballs, knuckleballs, palm balls, rising fastballs, and slurveballs are less common, as they are specific to each pitcher. It’s important to note that all of these pitches are changeups, except for the fastball. Even if we exclude two-seam, four-seam, and rising fastballs, all 10+ pitches fall into the category of changeups. So, how do so many different pitches come into existence?
The secret lies in the 108 threads embedded in the baseball and the air resistance it experiences. When the ball leaves the pitcher’s hand, it spins and encounters air resistance. But not all sides of the ball experience the same resistance. The part of the baseball where the threads are located experiences more resistance. The trajectory of the ball changes depending on which grip the pitcher throws the ball with, which means which direction the threads rotate. There’s one law you need to know to understand the changeup, and that’s Bernoulli’s law. Bernoulli’s law defines the relationship between pressure and velocity acting on a fluid, stating that pressure decreases where the fluid is moving faster and increases where it is moving slower.
Consider a curve, a type of changing ball. A curveball is a changeup that comes in like a fastball and then curves sharply from top to bottom just as the batter is about to swing the bat, just before reaching home plate. It’s one of the most exciting things to watch in baseball, as pitchers who use curveballs as their primary pitches strike out batters with them. This happens because the grip that the pitcher has on the ball when he throws it causes it to rotate strongly from top to bottom, which means that the top part of the ball has a different direction of rotation and air resistance than the bottom part of the ball, which decreases its velocity and increases its velocity. According to Bernoulli’s law, the top of the ball is under more pressure and the bottom is under less pressure, so the ball will eventually curve from top to bottom. When this curve coincides with the moment the batter swings the bat, the effectiveness of the curve is maximised. This shows that the distance from the mound to the catcher’s mitt is precisely calculated.
All of these different pitches basically follow Bernoulli’s Law. The slider is a different grip than the curve, which changes the ball‘s trajectory laterally. It’s relatively easy to learn and is common in amateur baseball. As you can see, each changeup has a unique trajectory, and the grip used to generate it is also unique. However, there”s one type of changeup that stands out from the rest. This is the knuckleball. The knuckleball doesn”t change the trajectory of the ball by rotating it in a specific direction like other pitches. It”s usually thrown without using the wrist, with the fingernail sandwiched between the threads, so the ball has very little rotation. This results in an irregular trajectory, like a butterfly dancing. Theoretically, because the ball doesn‘t rotate, it encounters great resistance in any direction. As a result, the weight of the ball and the resistance of the air generate lift in random directions, causing it to fly in directions that even the pitcher can’t predict. This strange change-up causes batters to swing wildly at pitches that travel less than 100 kilometres per hour. Even the best catchers in the major leagues struggle to catch it. Because it’s so difficult to learn and so difficult to throw, very few pitchers have perfected it.
Knuckleballs aside, do all pitchers throw the same changeup with the same grip? There is one thing we shouldn’t overlook. Baseball is a human sport. No two pitchers’ changeups are ever the same. Even with the same slider, different pitchers will have different rotations, different drops, different velocities, etc. You could say that this is simply a difference in ability, but a pitcher”s ability is more than just the ability to throw the ball. Every pitcher has their own pitching form, and it is this form that makes the characteristics of their changeup different. In the end, there is no standard for pitching form, so pitchers have to work hard to find the changeup that works best for them.
The amount of research that has been done on the changeup is endless, and there is a lot of it. Even top pitchers don‘t know the grip of every changeup, and it’s hard to throw any of them with confidence. In this blog post, I’ll try to convey some of the knowledge I’ve gained through my personal interest in baseball. I believe that baseball is one of the most complex sports of any sport. However, if you’re interested, you can learn the different rules, plays, and sports science behind it. In this article, we’ve talked about the science behind the pitcher’s changeup, but there’s also a lot of science behind the batter’s body’s reaction to the pitch, which takes less than 0.4 seconds to identify and react to as a strike. As a result of this article, you should pay more attention to pitchers‘ changeups when watching baseball games, and look for interesting data such as commentators’ comments and studies showing that changeup pitchers perform better in humid summers.
