pitch recognition Archives

Keeping Your Eyes On The Ball Takes Practice

April 9, 2020 by Tom

There’s no argument that a baseball batter’s ability to track an incoming pitch is critical to hitting performance but it’s the details of how his eyes perform that task that researchers are still figuring out. While previous studies have confirmed that expert hitters are better than novices at tracking a moving object, we still need to breakdown the process if we want to build better training tools for athletes.

A study released this month in PLOS ONE took a big step to understanding this visual perception of athletes.

Lack Of Pitch Recognition Affects Swing Mechanics

July 12, 2022April 8, 2017 by SWD V

If a batter is able to correctly predict the pitch type, his swing movement will be timed in unison with the pitcher’s throwing motion. Tomohisa Miyanishi and So Endo of the Graduate School of Sports Science at Japan’s Sendai University set out to actually measure the the correlation of the mirrored movements.

Visual Perception Tests Help Explain Poor Hitting By Baseball Pitchers

July 12, 2022March 31, 2017 by SWD V

Do pitchers and non-pitchers all start with the same level of perceptual cognitive abilities, (i.e. the same “hardware”) and then diverge based on hours of deliberate practice (improving the “software” of the brain)? To find out, a team of researchers at Duke University dug into a treasure trove of data on over 500 baseball players who had been tested using the Nike Sensory Station (now Senaptec) between 2010 and 2014.

Study Examines Baseball/Softball Hitting Movement Through Use Of Tee-Batting

July 12, 2022March 24, 2017 by SWD V

A new study from researchers in Japan digs deeper into understanding how hitters anticipate a pitch’s location and coordinate their body movements to be sure the sweet spot of the bat arrives on target and on time to connect.

Righties vs Lefties – The Importance Of Handedness Training In Hitting

July 8, 2022March 17, 2017 by SWD V

Most batters would prefer to face an opposite-hand (OH) pitcher, righty vs lefty and vice versa. With the dominance of right-handed pitchers in the game, the left-handed hitter comes to the plate with a built-in advantage. But what exactly is that advantage? What would happen if the pitcher population in the league was more balanced, righties to lefties? Two sets of researchers set out to dig a little deeper into this phenomenon of visual perception.

Research Finds That Pitch Recognition Skill Is Linked With Season Walk Percentage

December 8, 2016 by SWD V

“Yeah, but will it transfer out to the field?” It is the most asked question about any type of sports training. Tools, techniques and technologies all seem logical in their theory and approach but the bottom line is, well, the bottom line. It’s no different in baseball. Coaches, parents and most of all players would like some empirical evidence that there is a transfer of learning from drills to statistical performance at the plate.

That’s why we were excited to see the results of a recent study, the first of two by Dr. Sean Müller and Dr. Peter Fadde, Co-Founder and Chief Science Officer at gameSense Sports, that found a significant link between the visual anticipation skills of hitters, also known as pitch recognition, and their actual statistical performance during a season.

Study Confirms That First Third Of Ball Flight Is Key For Baseball Hitters

July 12, 2022October 19, 2016 by SWD V

A baseball hitter relies more on pitch information during the first third of ball flight than the final third. Nothing new there as coaches have been teaching pitch recognition that way for years. But sometimes a well-designed academic study comes along to confirm what may be obvious. That’s exactly what a group of Japanese sports scientists did earlier this year when they incorporated occlusion glasses, a pitching machine and a group of college baseball players.

In-Game Pitcher Video Is Effective For Pitch Recognition Training

July 12, 2022October 4, 2016 by SWD V

When teaching a new motor skill or game tactic, coaches rely on their athletes being able to take what they learned in practice and apply it during a game despite multiple changes in the environment, emotions and minute by minute situations.

For baseball hitting instructors, this is especially true when teaching pitch recognition and plate discipline. Facing the same pitchers in batting practice every day doesn’t provide the breadth of delivery mechanisms and early ball flight cues that players will see from multiple pitchers during an entire season

A Pitcher’s Facial Emotions Can Help A Hitter’s Pitch Recognition

September 6, 2016 by SWD V

Baseball players, like most athletes, are not emotionless robots. The pressure of the moment can affect their performance. Think of the pitcher-batter duels, where one team is one swing away from victory or defeat. The well-trained brain of the pitcher knows what to throw and the experienced batter knows what to expect.

Yet, athletes can’t always mask the stress they’re feeling, giving away possible cues to their opponent. Staring back at the pitcher, a hitter might be able to subconsciously detect fear or uncertainty which may help him predict the type, speed and location of the next pitch. That interaction is what Dr. Arik Cheshin of the University of Haifa wanted to understand.

Pitch Recognition Training Dramatically Improves Runs Per For Southeast Missouri State Baseball

September 1, 2016 by SWD V

Peter Fadde Ph.D., Chief Science Officer at gameSense Sports, has been on the front lines of pitch recognition science for over 20 years. Over the last three years, his hands-on coaching has helped the Southeast Missouri State University (SEMO) baseball team to dramatically improve their offensive stats. In 2013, SEMO averaged 5.7 runs per game. That ranked #108 … Read more