Hitting? Why? Well, as pitchers it's important to study what the hitters are up to so we can always stay a step ahead. Plus, I like hitting. It's fun.
The world of neuroscience is rapidly progressing, giving us ever greater insight into how hitters ever hit a baseball thrown by the best in the world. The book The Performance Cortex does a really good job of explaining the neural side of sports performance. For a shorter read, check out this Twitter post that A) links to an article abstract detailing how spin impacts a hitter’s bat/ball precision, B) includes a pull quote that tells the takeaway from the study, and C) links to data from a Trevor Bauer experiment on using illegal substances to manipulate fastball spin rate.
For something between the length of a book and a twitter post, check out this article on how Max Muncy got a base hit off a 103mph heater and this interesting read about how the human eye can see motion that doesn’t exist.
PLAYERS TODAY ARE BETTER
A TREMENDOUS 2017 BATTED BALL DATABASE
Anthony Shattell does some great things with graphs, and he has put together this amazing database of batted ball data from 2017 that anyone can access. It has raw data as well as a bunch of cool graphs.
Tomorrow will be the last in this year-end series of Best Things, and it will cover personal growth, a topic many people like to think on this time of year.