Abstract
An excellent pitcher with abundant repertoire and dominant ball control are the decisive factors in a baseball game. Curveballs and sliders that veer laterally or downwardly through the batter's hitting zone are 2 examples of breaking the balls for a pitcher to suppress the batter’s hot hitting. This study aimed to analytically study the trajectory of these 2 breaking balls. In the attempt to study control techniques of curveballs and sliders, we used numerical computation to simulate the trajectory motions and investigated the effect of initial velocity and rotating speed at the base entry. The results showed that 15 km/hr difference in the release velocity ends up with an averaged difference of entry height by 20.0 cm, but a 300-rpm release angular speed difference makes a slight change of only 1.5 cm in entry height. We concluded that the drag force increases the flight time of a pitch by about 0.02 s, and the Magnus force induces the lateral movement and achieves more drop. The obtained quantitative relationship between the initial conditions and entry positions will offer pitchers necessary academic knowledge-aided pitching training in sports science.
| Translated title of the contribution | Numerical Simulation of the Trajectory of Curveball and Slider and Knowledge-Aided Training |
|---|---|
| Original language | Chinese (Traditional) |
| Pages (from-to) | 53-67 |
| Number of pages | 15 |
| Journal | 大專體育學刊 |
| Volume | 22 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| State | Published - 31 Mar 2020 |
Keywords
- sports science
- drag force
- Magnus force
- entry position