Peter Fadde of Southern Illinois University presents research on training batters to recognize pitches. How do we become better pattern recognizers? It’s extremely important in hitting.
This is part of the evolution of sports series.
Update: Working on the problem for ten years. Not a passive skill. We can measure this, test this, train this.
Update: Nature or nurture? Billy Beane thinks pitch recognition is ingrained at an early age.
Update: Three zones of pitch recognition, from hand to plate.
Update: Experts do very well in zone one, right out of the hand of the pitcher.
Update: Showed batter just pitch out of hand with instant correction. Batters picked up the pitches prey quickly.
Update: Trains pitch type, location, swing/don’t swing. NCAA saw dramatic improvements over control group.
Update: Training can be de-coupled from physical work. Train on the bus!
Update: Can be used to evaluate talent at lower levels. Identify players with good mechanics who do a poor job of pitch recognition.
Update: Start working on this in Little League.
Nice presentation, a very interesting topic. See more at peterfadde.com.
I have a Google Alert for “pitch recognition” so it picked up your blog post and put it in my e-mail this morning. You nailed all my key points on testing/training Pitch Recognition.
Some time ago the Boston Herald had a fascinating article on how Manny Ramirez trained. I linked to it in a post “How Manny became a Jedi.” Most of the original article is now behind a paywall.