A Baseball Note for Ryan

This seemed too long for a FB post, but I wanted to tell you about it.

I recently watched a documentary on Netflix called "Fastball." If you have Netflix, check it out. The description mentions the science of pitching and all, which caught my interest, but it was mostly a ton of anecdotes from old players and newspaper clippings and a few scientists sprinkled in.

It looks at, among other things, the "fastest" or "hardest" thrower ever. It looks at the four names in history that held their specific ages' imagination as the hardest throwers. Each had their own ers technological thumbs as well, which was kinda cool.

The science discussion mainly looked at what the old-school method meant in today's terms, and, with those adjustments, who threw "hardest."

Have you seen this documentary? What follows will be a SPOILER of the actual data.

Okay, they started with Aroldis Chapman's 105 mph one day as the starting point for their discussion.

They went back to the oldest "hardest" thrower, the Big Train, Walter Johnson. They used a military based deal with a copper net and a copper plate, both behind home plate, and clocked him at 122 feet per second. Back then, nobody even talked about mph for anything, really. 122 ft/sec calculated out to 86 mph, but that was about 7.5 feet behind home plate.

Next they looked at Bob Feller. After the cop-motorcycle experiment, they set him up with a similar military deal as Walter Johnson, only 25 years more sophisticated. His pitches were clocked in 96 mph, this time right at home plate. At the time, everybody considered that the hardest a human could throw.

Next up was Nolan Ryan. Stories about him were legendary, and while with the Astros (I believe) again they used some military equipment, this time closer to a speed gun. This turned out to be the first pitcher ever to hit triple digits, like 100.2 or something. This time, the gun was aimed about six feet in front of home plate.

They went back to Chapman and asked the main question: where is the gun aimed for Chapman's 105? Turns out it's aimed 50 feet from home plate, by far the furthest of all the other measures. It's basically a foot from a pitcher's release point. This close will naturally result in faster speed readings.

The next question is: can you back up those other pitcher's pitches and make their speeds relative to the current 50 foot distance?

Yes, apparently.

Walter Jonson's pitch speed of 86 seven-and-a-half feet behind home plate relates to 98 or so.

Bob Feller's pitch speed equated to 106 and some decimals.

Nolan Ryan, in his 30s, was pitching by today's standard above 107.

Nolan Ryan was interviewed, of course, and they showed his last few pitches against the Mariners. One was 96. The next one was in the 70s and he looked iffy with his elbow. The next one went fifty feet and he walked off the mound, having felt his elbow tendon pop like a rubber band, as he put it. He knew, at 46 years old, his time as a major league pitcher had just ended.

Check out the show if you have Netflix. One of my favorite parts is Bob Gibson: "Yeah I looked pissed. I was pissed! I had to pitch perfect every game because those guys couldn't score any damn runs! I had that super-low ERA and still had 9 losses or something. Ugh. How many 1-0 losses I had that year..."

Bob Gibson's great.