PatAg said:

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Maybe he should work more on his control and less on throwing as fast as he can.

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He has added a slider that he is throwing for strikes.

I would say he is starting to figure things out

you know the safety issue crossed my mind too...

at what velocity does wearing a helmet no longer prevent a serious head injury

Pretty amazing June so far.



6 innings pitched, 12 Ks and 1 walk.

His stuff is filthy almost every night.

W said:

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you know the safety issue crossed my mind too...

at what velocity does wearing a helmet no longer prevent a serious head injury

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When college began toning down the bats ~18 years ago, I don't know if we had the exit velocity technology that we have today. MLB numbers peak at around 120, right? Were the college players getting higher than that with some of the aluminum bats? I don't know.

Also, how much of the power surge is due to a pitching velocity surge? A good physics question, I suppose.

W said:

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you know the safety issue crossed my mind too...

at what velocity does wearing a helmet no longer prevent a serious head injury

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What do you consider a serious head injury? You can get a concussion, which is considered serious, at fairly low velocities. MLB's current helmets (Rawlings SP100, $500 a pop) are rated to 100MPH to hopefully prevent fractures and hemorrhaging.

https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/jordan-hicks-now-with-command/

Radar guns pick up the speed of the ball at the point when it's released from the pitcher's hand. From what I recall a ball that has a 105 MPH radar reading will cross the plate somewhere around 94-95 MPH. So in theory, the helmet should be sufficient.

Fenrir said:

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Radar guns pick up the speed of the ball at the point when it's released from the pitcher's hand. From what I recall a ball that has a 105 MPH radar reading will cross the plate somewhere around 94-95 MPH. So in theory, the helmet should be sufficient.

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Are you sure this is the case?

You're saying when we see on the TV Chapman throwing 100, it's really coming across the plate at 90-91. Or if we see a pitcher throwing a 91 fastball that it's coming across the plate at 81-84mph.

I'm not saying it won't slow down because, but a 10 mph difference in 60 ft seems a little drastic.

http://spiff.rit.edu/richmond/baseball/traj/traj.html

According to this physicist, a 105 mph pitch is probably losing more than 10 mph. Probably around 13 mph or so.

Quote:

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initial horizontal speed final horizontal speed loss
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100 mph 88 mph 12 mph
90 mph 80 mph 10 mph
80 mph 71 mph 9 mph
67 mph 59 mph 8 mph
----------------------------------------------------------------------

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Watch the Netflix show called FASTBALL.

It does an amazing job of exploring this topic with lots of screen time for Nolan Ryan and Justin Verlander. Basically they used to point the guns like 10 feet in front of the plate. A Nolan Ryan 100mph fastball back then is faster than anything we're seeing today. Or at least equivalent.