Posted by: missouridad () on Fri Feb 16 21:09:43 2001

The answer to your question about how the pitch speed effects ball exit speed from the bat is answered in a study that Paul pointed to.
It's at www.nisss.org/BBSPEED6a.html
Figure 16 shows that ball exit speed from the bat only goes up a little as pitch speed increases. But it turns out that Figure 17 explains even this small increase in ball exit speed. It's because the bat speed is increasing as pitch speed increases. We swing faster at pitches that make us get there quicker and swing slower as the ball goes slower. Pitch velocity has little to know effect on how hard a ball is hit.