We are four humble men who love sports, but hate sports commentary. Peter Gammons is our hero and John Madden is our enemy. If you were to ask us our purpose, our answer would be simple: "We are forever locked in Mortal Kombat for the souls of sports fans everywhere. Statistics are our science and 'the immeasurable character of men' is the obsolete religion of blind faith. Our job is to prove that God doesn't exist and that athletes are merely cold, metal machines with no hearts or souls."
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Sunday, December 27, 2009
Sports Science: Hitting a Softball Harder Than Hitting a Baseball?
This experiment was incredibly poorly designed. 1) The softball pitcher was the best vs guys who will probably never play in the pros, why not have Jennie Finch pitch against Albert Pujols and then see how well a softball pitcher fares? 2) The reason the guys didn't hit the ball well was solely because it was something new. You ask an athlete to play a Eddie Van Halen solo and he's gonna fail when he first starts out as well. big deal. 3) How about these guys have like Johan Santana pitch against college softball players and see how well THEY do.
These guys came to the conclusion that hitting a softball was harder based upon a extremely small data sample. That's annointing Jay Bruce into the Baseball Hall of Fame after his first 20 games
Hitting a baseball in infinitely harder than hitting a softball
You are right that there are some flaws to make this theory iron clad. I speculate from watching some of the others experiments that they can't get big celebrities like Albert Pujols, Johan Santana, and more established professional athletes on the show. I wish they did because than it would be better, but they are working with what they have.
This experiment was incredibly poorly designed. 1) The softball pitcher was the best vs guys who will probably never play in the pros, why not have Jennie Finch pitch against Albert Pujols and then see how well a softball pitcher fares? 2) The reason the guys didn't hit the ball well was solely because it was something new. You ask an athlete to play a Eddie Van Halen solo and he's gonna fail when he first starts out as well. big deal. 3) How about these guys have like Johan Santana pitch against college softball players and see how well THEY do.
ReplyDeleteThese guys came to the conclusion that hitting a softball was harder based upon a extremely small data sample. That's annointing Jay Bruce into the Baseball Hall of Fame after his first 20 games
Hitting a baseball in infinitely harder than hitting a softball
You are right that there are some flaws to make this theory iron clad. I speculate from watching some of the others experiments that they can't get big celebrities like Albert Pujols, Johan Santana, and more established professional athletes on the show. I wish they did because than it would be better, but they are working with what they have.
ReplyDelete