Rising Fastball

All overhand thrown baseballs sink....gravity is not to be denied. Some sink less than others however and this brings us the term "rising fastballs".

Can be arm slot, can be velocity, and can be spin. Some balls sink...or appear to sink less than others. I belive Adair's book addresses this or you can Google it.

I saw the evidence that it is impossible. I also know that science is proven wrong when an example doesn't fit the mold. All good scientists question everything. It wasn't that long ago that everyone said that it is scientifically impossible for a curveball to curve and a hummingbird to hover.

Obviously those things happen.

If it is impossible, why does it persist? What optical illusion is responsible for people percieving a fastball to rise? Does it just not sink as much as a regular fastball? I swear I saw one that started out up in the zone and almost ended up hitting a kid in the face. The batter almost got hit, the catcher couldn't put a glove on it and the umpire flinched. The ump said after the game that it was coming at his neck and it just kept rising up and in at the batter. (Friend of ours).

I would just like to explain it to my son on why it moves like that or why it appears to move like that.

I don't know about all the other stuff but the physics of a ball moving through the air are very well understood and documented.

That said a softball rises because of the low release point and I could envision a low release point making a baseball do the same thing. If it hit something then this would affect a ball's trajectory.

Like I said Google it and you will find more information than you want.

I don't know all the physics either, but I wonder if the spin on the ball could produce "lift" at a certain velocity. Similar to the lift airplane wings impart. It is an interesting question though.

I was watching the world series and I saw one particulat pitch that they showed in replay, up close, in slow motion and the ball appeared to rise. I actually saw the catcher raise his glove to meet the ball as it came in. Optical illusion? I don't know.

I was on Livescience.com a week or so ago. They have a physicist who says that curveballs barely move and it is mostly just an illusion.

Scientists!?!

I don't know about that. I have seen kids hit the dirt on a curveball, only to have it break in for a called strike. Pretty good illusion. Maybe we shouldn't call them pitchers anymore. We can just refer to them as magicians. It'd be cool if they could levitate on the mound too. Maybe get them back to the advantage Gibson had.

Rising fastballs are an illusion but a fastball thrown from a low enough release point to a high enough point with a lot of backspin can still be rising as it crosses the plate. The ball is sinking due to gravity but hasn't overcome the initial upwards trajectory. I have no doubt that Pedro in his prime, with his combination of a low release point, good velocity and excellent spin, could have thrown a fastball up out of the zone that was still rising a tiny bit as it crossed the plate. I'd also guess that a Tom Seaver, head high fastball could have been moving up as it crossed the plate.

As an extreme example stand on the mound and throw a ball over the backstop. I guarantee it will be rising as it crosses over the plate.

A less extreme example is a submarine pitcher who can have a high pitch still rising as it crosses the plate due to the initial angle of the pitch.

As for curveballs they certainly break, but not quite as much and definitely not as sharply as it appears to the batter.

I personally have seen fastballs rise. Not everyone can do it, but it can be done. I've discussed the physics of it on here before. It is a function of spin (dipole moment/rotational velocity), air buoyancy (affected by linear velocity) and in addition, sometimes of air pockets along the ball's path (the effects of which are most prevalently observed with knuckleballs).

The problem with some physicists is that if they cannot explain it, they assume it doesn't really happen. That is not good scientific method; it's really just vanity. If you observe that something IS happening, you persist in your development of theory until you figure out the whys of it all. You don't assume that you know everything and thus, if you don't know it, it can't be so.

Isn't that the story of Newton and the apple, after all? If he didn't understand gravity at the time, should he have claimed that the apple falling onto his head was all an hallucination? And if so, then how would he have explained the evident bump on his noggin?

If curves didn't actually curve, then what would explain the fact that we sometimes perceive a curve and we sometimes do not? Why would our eyes see two different pitches differently if they were not in fact behaving differently?

By the same token, why do our eyes tell us one fastball rises, while another is flat, and still another sinks, tails, or cuts? Is there some magic dust on the ball that bewitches our senses? Or is it because the ball is actually behaving exactly as we perceive it to be behaving?

If you and thousands of others all see it, and if cameras record it, then it did actually happen. If you can't explain why, keep at it. But don't tell me it didn't happen just because you can't explain it.

Midlo,
Yet on the other hand we know that curves seen from behind the batter or on TV seem to break much more sharply than they look like they are breaking when seen from the side, so we know there's an optical illusion involved in some way. One could also go through the PitchTrax data and see if a fastball has ever been tracked that rose. I don't believe that one ever has at least not one that was in the strike zone.

I'd have to see a fastball look like it was rising from the side to believe that it was rising.

Although I agree that in general fastballs don't rise, personally I don't believe there's enough information out there to categorically state that a fastball can't rise. There are assumptions about maximum spin rate, etc. that may not be true. Did anyone ever measure the spin rate on Pedro's fastball when he was in his prime? My guess is that it had a higher spin rate than the assumed maximums.

If you look at clips of Tom Seaver his release point was very low, probably between 3 and 4 feet off the ground. A fast enough fastball with enough spin to overcome half the effects of gravity would only drop about 1.4 feet relative to it's original trajectory. That does mean that there's a chance that a fastball from Seaver could have been rising as it crossed the plate if it ended up about 5 feet above the ground. My guess is that there was many a batter who swung through a Tom Seaver fastball that crossed the plate at eye level.

We don't have to resort to calculation to see that a pitched strike does not cross the back of the plate higher from the ground than when it crossed the front of the plate. Instead, how about simple observation? Nearly every MLB game is televised, and many stadiums have cameras placed at an optimal position and height to track how a pitch rises or falls. There lots of side views of batters (especially sluggers), some in slow motion.

I am quite certain that if Pedro Martinez' pitches rose as the crossed the plate, the networks would have been pleased to show it. They would have been even more pleased to show a firevballer like Nolan Ryan throwing a rising fastball. Yet in 30+ years of TV coverage of 99+% of MLB games, there haven't been any.

Truth is, nobody even comes close.

Could it be as simple as the release point? The fastball is being released early back by the ear instead of outfront of the body thus giving the illusion that the ball is rising. The viewer is expecting the ball to be on a plane from the release point outfront but the ball is actually on a higher plane from being released at a higher point along the arm's motion? It happens so fast that you'd most likely not be able to see the early release with the naked eye and to the viewer the ball is rising instead of dropping.

3finger,
My guess is that most of the people at the networks thought that a fastball did rise until relatively recently so a Pedro fastball from 1997 that was up out of the zone and didn't sink wouldn't have been news. Same thing goes for Seaver, even more so. I'll even hazard to guess if you go back to broadcasts from Nolan Ryan's heyday that you'll hear announcers talking about how much his fastball was rising. That doesn't mean it happened but once again a 100+ mph Ryan fastball at eye level could have been rising as it crossed the plate and nobody would have thought anything of it back then.

BTW, I found some pitch fx data showing that a couple of Bonderman's high fastballs only dropped about 2 inches including the drop due to gravity. These were 92 mph fastballs so my guess is that if one looked hard enough at the pitch fx data it would be possible to find a rising fastball. No it wouldn't be rising compared to the original trajectory but it would be rising as it crossed the plate.

CADad,
Well, I guess we disagree pretty strongly on what networks would consider "viewing-worthy".

If it is convenient, could you post a link to pitch fx data showing minimal drops?

Obviously if you have a pitcher who's about 6' tall, and he's standing on a mound that is 10-12" above home plate, and releasing the ball from around ear level, the ball is starting out over 6' high. When it reaches the plate, it is typically going to be lower. (At least, you would hope so.)

But it is conceivable that a ball with exceptionally hard spin will break upwards, for the same reason that a 12-6 curve breaks downwards. The curve has the advantage of working with gravity while the fastball works against it, hence you see a net break very rarely in the case of a fastball. But anyone who ever hit against, say, Jim Palmer would tell you the ball could come in maybe 4' high and then "hop" to shoulder level. And yes, I saw that happen on TV and heard the commentators discuss it at that time.

And yes, I have sat behind home plate and caught for a 95 mph guy who could do it on occasion as well. This particular fellow would more commonly throw a ball knee high that you would think would sink out of the zone, only to have it "hug" the knees and get the strike call. That is, his "hop" would basically cancel out the gravitational effect. And I have seen that go on with some frequency in MLB games. Roy Oswalt comes to mind.

Midlo,
Most people release at about 6' or more above the ground and especially the ones who have the most direct backspin. That's why I used examples such as Pedro or Seaver who have relatively low release points even though they don't get pure backspin and generally won't get as much "vertical movement" in pitch fx terms. Nobody throws hard enough and gets enough backspin to get the ball to completely overcome gravity so the only way for it to happen is due to a low release point and the ball starting out moving upwards. Submariners have been documented throwing rising fastballs in this manner. I'm simply contending that a low release point and good backspin could result in the same effect on a high pitch.

3finger,
Bonderman pitch fx

I'm not completely certain how the vertical movement is defined in this. The difference between the 4 seamer and the slider as far as vertical movement is pretty amazing in any case.

It isn't how they normally do it in pitch fx. The largest numbers for vertical movement I've seen in pitch fx are about 20 inches of vertical movement which would be plenty enough for a pitch released low at high velocity to be still rising as it crossed the plate a foot or more above the release point.

FB do not rise.....period....stop the insanity.

This article does a great job of explaining it.

Oh wait got to go Aliens have abducted my son…..

Rising FB Explained

quote:

Originally posted by CADad:
I'm not completely certain how the vertical movement is defined in this. The difference between the 4 seamer and the slider as far as vertical movement is pretty amazing in any case.

Unless they changed the methodology recently, pitch fx numbers are expressed relative to the trajectory the ball would take if there were no aerodynamic forces on the ball. If that is still true, then even Seaver would need something like 2-3 feet of upwards pitch fx movement to show that the ball actually rose as it went across the plate.

Link to all sorts of links on the system, and how to get the "raw data".
Nathan

BOF,
Your phycisist also came up with this info.

• The rising fastball is an illusion
• There is an ideal bat weight for every player from little league to major league, and many players use a bat that is too heavy for them.
• Outlawing aluminum bats in college would produce faster batted ball speeds, endangering pitchers.• Most batters would profit from using an end-loaded bat, but some would not.

What?

Here's what MythBusters think of it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1VClnk3l-k

Here is what a professor of systems and engineering says:

"The Rising Fastball — For years batters swore that some pitchers could throw a rising fastball that would "jump" a half foot as it crossed the plate, making it hop over the bat. But this isn't possible, Bahill says. Even the greatest pitchers can't violate the laws of physics. Once a ball is thrown, it follows a smooth trajectory. Physics simply doesn't allow abrupt jumps in that trajectory.


So what's happening? "The batter is using the wrong mental model," Bahill says.

Batters divide a pitch into thirds. The first third is sensory gathering, the second is computing, and the third is swinging. So a pitcher throws several 90-mph fastballs and the batter develops a mental model and reaction to this speed, Bahill says.

Then the pitcher slips in a 95-mph fastball. During the sensory gathering segment of the pitch, the batter doesn't see anything different. He calculates where the 90-mph fastball would go and swings at that spot. But the 95-mph fastball has a flatter trajectory. It doesn't drop quite as much from the pitcher to plate because it's going faster.

"When the batter starts to swing, he takes his eye off the ball to look at the predicted bat-ball collision point," Bahill says. "When the ball comes back into his view, it is higher than his mental model predicted and he sees it 'jump' higher than where he calculated that it would be."

A link to the article: http://uanews.org/node/2845

One more link for now:

http://www.mvpmods.com/index.p...d223d18f3044c5e87608

This doesn't mean much, but anyone can get a beach ball or a balloon to break up by putting back spin on it. I know it is a lot lighter with a lot more surface area, but it is the same principle. I guess I just think that a pro can get a basebll to do a lot of things that most people don't have a chance to do.

Maybe the MythBusters should try to shoot a cannon ball with seams on it with a heck of a lot of backspin to see if it would work. Or maybe someone with a really high tech pitching machine could try to duplicate it. Maybe turn it upside down and have it throw a 90 mph curveball.

quote:

Originally posted by Doughnutman:
BOF,
Your phycisist also came up with this info.

• Outlawing aluminum bats in college would produce faster batted ball speeds, endangering pitchers.• Most batters would profit from using an end-loaded bat, but some would not.

What?

Dman check the date on the article....2000, bats have changed, physics have not. I won't digress into bats here, for another thread. I am surprised you did not mention how he looks...he does look like a physicist.

BOF,
I reread it. He needs to address spin. Using his logic, the only difference in a pitch is speed and location. Gravity and physics will take care of the rest. It sounds like he is describing an explosive fastball. Like when a pitcher puts a lttle extra on it and it gets to the batter quicker. Dodge balls break up. Why not a fastball if the right spin is put on it? Why couldn't a fastball be like a slider? They don't break right away until they get closer to the plate. We have big loopy curveballs and sharp late breaking ones. It all has to do with spin.

Pretty much anyone can throw a rising fastball. See my previous example of throwing the ball over the backstop. The question is how high above the strike zone it has to be for the ball to be rising. The largest numbers I've seen for vertical movement in pitch fx are about 20 inches. (The Bonderman example implies vertical movement up to about 26 or more inches, but let's not use that because we don't know how it is defined.) A fastball with no spin thrown at an average velocity of 95 mph would drop only 28 inches. That tells us that the overall downward acceleration can be derived from 1/2*a*t^2 = 8 inches. The result is an overall downward acceleration of about 9 fpss. Now we need to figure out what upward initial velocity results in a ball that is not going down as it crosses the plate. That's Vu - a*t=0. In this case that is 3.44 fps upwards. The average upwards velocity is going to be 1.72 fps meaning that the ball will end up just 8 inches above the release point and cross the plate going level. A slight increase in initial upwards velocity would result in a ball rising as it crosses the plate.

Now let's take a more realistic example and use a Tom Seaver type release point, velocity and vertical movement. I'm going to type in the numbers and then work it out so we'll see how close it would be to reality. Seaver most likely released the ball about 4' off the ground. He probably got vertical movement similar to Pedro or up to about 12". He probably averaged about 90 mph on a good fastball. Average not release velocity.

Seaver had a long stride so we can probably use 52' as the distance from release to the front of the plate. At an average speed of 90 mph the time would then be .394 seconds. The downwards travel based on gravity would then be 29.8 inches. Therefore the cumulative downward travel would be 17.8 inches. That is equivalent to a downwards acceleration of 19.02 fpss. That means that the ball would have to have an initial upwards velocity of 7.53 fps. The average upwards velocity would be 3.76 fps and the upward movement would be about 1.5 ft. That means that it is very realistic that a Tom Seaver fastball that was 5.5 ft above the ground or higher was still rising as it crossed the front of the plate. Was it a strike? Only if it was swung at, but I'm guessing that his rising fastball was swung at quite a few times.

Dman you are one stubborn Donut.

Lets ignore what CADad is pointing out for the moment. (Do I sound like your wife?) The forces on a ball spinning are called Magnus forces. They typically are about 1/3 that of gravity, so it is impossible for the ball spinning forces to overcome the sink due to gravity. With sliders and curveballs the force is additive (in the general direction of gravity) so they break more.

Magnus force

You seem interested in this stuff so I would highly recommend Adair’s book “The physics of baseball” It is understandable to the average guy and for technical types it goes into enough detail. It is in paperback and is less than $10.

BOF,
It is interesting stuff. I really like the fact that physicist in the last century thought that curveballs were an optical illusion.

Science is like that. They think things are impossible until someone proves it is possible. Maybe rising fastballs are impossible because no one has figured it out yet. Good science always doubts results because they often change. Even Einstein was proven wrong on a few things.

I shall remain in the "it is perhaps possible crowd".

Doughnutman,

I may have an explanation to possibly describe this...the late 'pop' on a FB where it suddenly appears to accelerate. I don't know if it really happens, but the illusion is that it 'jumps' and increases in speed. Catchers will often have difficulty catching these pitches particuarly if there is late movement, which make this a very difficult pitch to catch.

Just a thought.

quote:

I really like the fact that physicist in the last century thought that curveballs were an optical illusion.

Of course, the "last century" being referred to is the 1800s. But consider this quotation:
"I remembered that I had often seen a tennis ball, struck with an oblique racket, describe such a curve line. For, a circular as well as a progressive motion being communicated to it by that stroke, its parts, on that side where the motions conspire, must press and beat the contiguous air more violently than the other; and there excite a reluctancy and re-action of the air proportionally greater."

Awkward phrasing, but that was the style back in 1671, when Isaac Newton wrote these words. As Newton noted and correctly explained, tennis balls curve; so do s****r balls. I doubt that anyone has ever claimed that the obvious curvature of these balls is an optical illusion. So we should take someone's claim that physicists in the 1800s couldn't explain the curvature of a baseball and therefore asserted it is an optical illusion with a large grain of salt. (I'm sure one could find some physicist somewhere who didn't understand, but generally? No.)

A few posts back you jokingly suggested getting MythBusters to fire cannon balls with backspin. But it's not necessary; Benjamin Robins did those experiments and others in the mid 1700s. His artillery tables which take into account the spin of cannon balls and other projectiles were used for 2 centuries. Really, the mechanisms that make baseballs curve have been understood qualitatively for a long time.

Just to be the devils advocate, were there seams on those cannon balls? Doubtful.

Something else I thought of, I have seen balls rise when they are hit off of the bat for home runs. We are taught that back spin increases lift for a batted ball and I have seen that with my own eyes.

They start out flat and then just lift and carry until they start to drop. Is that impossible also?

Coach-W: You just described what the physicist described in the link I posted earlier.

D-man: Think what you want but as 3FG pointed out there are lots of mysteries in physics, however the dynamics of a ball flying through the air are very well understood. There are forces due to a ball spinning. I posted them earlier.

I will post some really weird at the end of this post.

CADad: Don’t get any ideas….I may sound like it, but I am not your wife.

D-man thanks for an interesting discussion.
--------------------------------
Now for some really weird stuff:

This dual character of nature's ultimate building block has other consequences. It leads - for reasons it would take a lot more space to understand - to a bizarre Alice in Wonderland situation in which a single atom can be in two places at once, and where atoms can communicate with each other instantaneously, even when on opposite sides of the universe.

Quantum theory is strange indeed. But the other pillar of modern physics - relativity - also has its quirks.

For example, it holds out the possibility of a diet plan that really works. Why? Because the faster you travel, the thinner you get.

This is a consequence of the "special" theory of relativity, which Einstein published in 1905. It's not at all obvious, because it's noticeable only at speeds close to that of light - about a million times faster than a passenger jet.

Nevertheless, if someone were to pass you at close to the speed of light, special relativity predicts that they would appear to be flattened in the direction they were travelling.

That isn't the only effect of special relativity. That person flying past you would also have their time slowed down. The second hand of their watch would hardly appear to be moving: if they waved at you, it would seem as if their arm were ploughing through treacle.

Einstein extended his theory, publishing the general theory of relativity in 1915. Fortuitously, this turned out to be theory of gravity as well. And it revealed that the slowing of time does not happen just for bodies that are moving very quickly, but also for bodies in strong gravity.
A consequence of this is that you age faster on the top floor of your house than on the ground floor. Why? Because on the ground floor, you are closer to the centre of the Earth, and therefore in slightly stronger gravity than higher up.

Of course, in normal life this is an extremely tiny effect. However, near bodies with very strong gravity, such as black holes, it becomes very significant. If you could hang near the edge of a black hole, time would slow so much for you that you would be able to see the entire future of the universe flash by.

Weird as this effect is, arguably the most amazing prediction of Einstein's general theory of relativity is that the universe had a beginning.
According to current estimates, it burst into being 13.7 billion years ago in a titanic explosion called the Big Bang, with the galaxies congealing out of the cooling debris.

The proof is nearer than you may think. Just switch on your TV and tune it between the stations. About one per cent of the static on your screen is the residual heat of that almighty fireball.

The heat of the Big Bang was bottled up in the universe, which, by definition, is all there is. It therefore had nowhere to go and, consequently, must be all around us today. Of course, it has been greatly cooled by the expansion of the universe, so it no longer appears as visible light but as microwaves, which can be picked up by your TV.
Microwaves are a form of light, and are made up of particles called "photons". Ninety-nine per cent of photons in the universe are not the result of starlight, but are tied up in the heat of the Big Bang.

If you could see microwaves, the whole night sky would be glowing like the inside of a light bulb. Which makes it all the more amazing that this heat was not discovered until 1965 - and then by complete accident. The two astronomers who found it - and carried off the Nobel Prize - thought that what their instruments had picked up was the microwave glow of pigeon droppings.

Rarely in the history of science can so profound a discovery have been mistaken for something so mundane.

Now that really is stranger than science fiction.

Billiard balls curve from spin, and they don't have seams.

Also, if you have ever thrown a hard, smooth surfaced rubber ball, it can be made to curve as well.

The impact of the seams is often overstated. Their greatest impact on a curve is that they can enhance the grip.

I do think the seams' rotation can matter, however, e.g., the differences between 2-seam and 4-seam fastballs. But people get hung up talking about the seams on a curve when really it is the rotation that matters.

Midlo,
The seams make a big difference, especially in reducing the drag. A seamless ball would bring back the dead ball era and then some.

BOF,
Don't worry.

BTW, I've heard that as an object with mass approaches the speed of light it's mass approaches infinity. Not a good way to lose weight.

Joba Rising Fastball

If this guy's math is correct then the assumptions that Adair used were way off base as to maximum spin rate and a rising fastball although extremely rare is possible.

However, the data I've seen doesn't indicate vertical movement greater than 20" so I'm a bit leery of this guy's math. I'll check his spreadsheet when I get time.

That's what I love about science. Maybe Adair's assumptions on spin rate are off. Maybe this guys spin rates are off. Change one variable and there you go. Rising fastball.

Donut,
I looked at the spreadsheet and he's off base somewhere with his assumptions. The most vertical movement Joba had was almost 17" and his fastball would have dropped about 27" assuming a ballistic trajectory. In Joba's case he's a tall guy with fairly high release point and he actually throws the ball a tiny bit downhill so it is dropping all the way.

The only way you're going to get a rising fastball is with a pitch up out of the strike zone thrown from a relatively low release point. Seaver could have done it, I don't think too many others could've and been anywhere close to the plate. In any case, short pitchers with low release points will have the ball rising most of the way to the plate on a high fastball even if it does drop a bit at the end and the appearance will be that of a rising fastball. But it won't actually hop at the end.

CADad,
The movement of the pitches in pitch fx are related to a point in space called y0. Up until some point in the '07 season, y0 was 40 feet from the plate, then it was moved to 55 feet, and finally settled in on 50 feet, all during '07.

I think Mike Fast assumed 40 feet-- which gives a gravity caused drop of only 18" or so-- when the distance was really 50 or 55 feet.

I think that 18" via gravity vs 17" of rise matches his account pretty well. It's just a wrong assumption or an outdated spreadsheet.

3finger,
Makes sense. I'll buy that rather than try to go through the spreadsheet in detail.

Could it be more like the trajectory of a balloon when you throw it? The rising fastball wouldn't have to rise above the release point. When you throw a beach ball or balloon it starts going down and then it curls up at the end due to the spin you put on it.

Could it be a fastball that starts on a downward trajectory from the release then rises a little bit at the end due to the spin taking over like a sharp slider? It wouldn't have to rise much to be effective and it would appear to have a heck of a rise.

I have seen batted balls do this and I have seen home run tracks on TV that show the ball rising dramatically on a home run. Especially when ARod hits a low one over the fence.

Pitchers make balls move counter to gravity everytime they throw a ball that breaks left or right. Gravity wants a ball to go straight down, obviously. I think the real question is can a pitcher throw it hard enough and with enough spin to make it rise. Theoretically it is possible with enough spin IMO.