The List: Eight Prospects With Strike Zone Red Flags - BaseballAmerica.com

As the article mentions, plate discpline stats are not the be-all or end-all when evaluating prospects development. But this article is from four years ago and only the top three of eight has made even a minimal impact at the major league level, and arguable only one has made a substantial impact. Why is this? It's likely because, as in the accuracy argument for QB's making the transition from NCAA to the NFL, if you can't do it at the lower level -- where pitchers are also struggling with command and control issues -- you won't be able to succeed giving away pitches and AB's at the major league level. They will exploit your weaknesses better than A level or even AA level ball. 

I agree with the title of this article, like with QB's it is a red-flag. 

from BaseballAmerica.com
http://www.baseballamerica.com/minors/8-hitting-prospects-with-strike-zone-red-flags/?_wcsid=8EB162800D50BAD2AB74003610640D767EBA8CD553241916#HbgdBAvqOIhUkXqe.97

THE LIST: EIGHT PROSPECTS WITH STRIKE ZONE RED FLAGS

It's still early in the minor league season, but we're at the point where we have meaningful data on players, both in terms of their performance and traditional scouting methods.

For hitters, the ability to control the strike zone is crucial. Whether it's plate discipline, pitch recognition or just swinging and missing through too many pitches in the strike zone, many promising prospects with tremendous raw tools have never been able to make the next step because of their inability to hone the strike zone.

That doesn't mean every minor league hitter with a low walk rate or a high strikeout rate is a bust waiting to happen. Pirates outfielder Starling Marte is an example of a player who never walked much in the minors but has become one of the best players in the game. And we have seen plenty of minor league hitters whose best skill was their ability to draw a walk never have success beyond the minors.

So while plate discipline is not necessarily a make-or-break factor in predicting a prospect's future, it's a red flag when hitters are having trouble recognizing spin, fishing for too many pitches outside the strike zone or are getting beat in the zone with stuff exposing holes in their swing. Hitters can certainly develop and cut down on those holes, but the pitching they're going to face only gets better as they move through the minors.

The hitters listed below are all examples of talented prospects who have red flags in their game related to their ability to control the strike zone. Some of these players are struggling, while others are off to seemingly great starts but have underlying issues that are cause for concern going forward.

1. Tim Anderson, ss, White Sox

Plate discipline has long been a concern with Anderson, but even with his aggressive approach he shined last year upon his jump to Double-A Birmingham. This year in Triple-A Charlotte, one of the most favorable parks in the minors for hitters, Anderson is hitting .287/.310/.380. Anderson is a premium athlete with plus-plus wheels and quick bat speed, but with five walks and 38 strikeouts in 155 plate appearances, his free-swinging tendencies hamper his ability to get on base.

2. Daz Cameron, of, Astros

Cameron signed for $4 million as the No. 37 overall pick in last year's draft, but the early returns have been ugly, to the point where the Astros sent him back to extended spring training after May 1. Cameron has swung and missed liberally, with 33 strikeouts in 87 plate appearances (38 percent), eight walks and a .143/.221/.221 overall line for low Class A Quad Cities. The good news is Cameron has still looked excellent defensively, with multiple diving catches. And if Cameron needs inspiration for how to turn things around after struggling in the Midwest League, he can just ask his father, Mike, who batted .238/.292/.297 in 122 games for South Bend as a 20-year-old, then eventually became one of the game's premier center fielders.

3. Austin Riley, 3b, Braves

Riley got off to a torrid start in his pro debut last season, batting .304/.389/.544 with 12 home runs in 60 games between two levels of Rookie ball. Riley has big-time raw power, but low Class A pitching has exposed more holes in Riley's swing, with nine walks and 44 strikeouts in 137 plate appearances for a .248/.299/.400 line overall.

4. Jake Gatewood, 3b, Brewers

Size can be a double-edged sword for hitters. In general, the bigger hitter will usually have more power potential than the shrimp, but at a certain point, being too tall works against a hitter. Being taller means the hitter has a larger strike zone he has to cover, and with longer arms often comes a longer swing with more holes. Gatewood has serious raw power, but he's hitting just .267/.277/.444 in 137 plate appearances. His free-swinging, all-or-nothing approach holds him back, with only one walk and 41 strikeouts for low Class A Wisconsin.

5. Monte Harrison, of, Brewers

When the Brewers drafted Harrison out of high school in the second round of the 2014 draft, he looked like a player who could combine top-shelf athleticism with a patient hitting approach to develop into a dynamic prospect. Instead, Harrison has been held bag by injuries and excessive strikeouts. Harrison's bat speed, foot speed and arm strength are still impressive raw tools, but he has hit just .160/.243/.210 with nine walks and 39 strikeouts in 112 plate appearances in the low Class A Midwest League.

6. Eric Jenkins, of, Rangers

The Rangers rolling the dice on a raw, toolsy, high-upside high school player with one of their top picks? That sounds familiar. Nick Williams, Joey Gallo and Lewis Brinson have all broken through as premium prospects, and while Jenkins doesn't have the raw power to match any of those three, he's a dynamic athlete with plus-plus speed. Rangers minor league hitting coaches have done a stellar job getting prospects to cut down on strikeouts, something Jenkins will have to do as he's hitting .206/.263/.298 in 158 plate appearances with 11 walks and 48 strikeouts for low Class A Hickory.

7. Javier Guerra, ss, Padres

Guerra doesn't have to be a prolific hitter to be a valuable player. He's a plus defender at shortstop, with smooth actions, a quick first step and a nose for the ball to go with a plus arm. As long as he can be serviceable at the plate, Guerra can be an everyday shortstop. To do that, Guerra will have to stop chasing so many pitches outside the strike zone. He's hitting .221/.280/.359 for high Class A Lake Elsinore, with 11 walks and 46 strikeouts in 144 plate appearances.

8. Travis Demeritte, 2b, Rangers

On the surface, Demeritte looks like he's in the midst of a breakout season, batting .278/.366/.677 with 12 home runs in 35 games for high Class A High Desert. Demeritte's quick hands and plus raw power are legitimate, and he has taken a step forward from where he was a year ago. Yet High Desert is still a launching pad, and once he leaves there, the underlying swing-and-miss issues and chase tendencies will get magnified. His 18 walks in 153 plate appearances aren't a problem, but the 53 strikeouts (a 35 percent K-rate) are a concern.

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The Sixth Tool: Training Baseball Pitch Recognition - MIT Sloan Analytics Conference

If you have not stumbled upon this as a resources, and I mean both the podcast and the slide presentation from MIT Sloan, you will be better off for the experience. Dr. Fadde is a great player development resource. And if MIT Sloan doesn't impress you, there's not much more I can do to help. Enjoy!!

Subject: The Sixth Tool: Training Baseball Pitch Recognition - MIT Sloan Analytics Conference

Pitch Recognition:The Sixth Tool - Peter J. Fadde, Ph.D.

from sloansportsconference.com

 http://www.sloansportsconference.com/content/the-sixth-tool-training-baseball-pitch-recognition/

The skill of pitch recognition, measured with metrics such as 0-Swing%, Line Drive %, and BB/K ratio, is so important that it's become a virtual sixth tool in baseball. But it's generally considered to be more a talent than a learned skill … and therefore not trainable. This talk describes and demonstrates a new approach that adapts the video-occlusion method developed in sport science research laboratories in order to both test and train this elusive perceptual-cognitive skill. Running on a laptop computer, video-occlusion can be used to measure the pitch recognition ability of prospects, diagnose pitch recognition problems, and systematically develop pitch recognition skill in high-performance baseball batters.
To see presentation slides click here
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Listen to Dr. Fadde- Professor and Chief Science Officer for gameSense Sports in Podcasts

Listen to Dr. Fadde- Professor and Chief Science Officer for gameSense Sports from Ahead Of The Curve with Jonathan Gelnar in Podcasts.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ahead-of-the-curve-with-jonathan-gelnar/id1256849644?i=1000431745679

Summary:

In this episode of Ahead of the Curve, I welcome Dr. Peter Fadde, pitch recognition expert, Chief Officer and Co-Founder of gameSense, and Associate Professor of Learning Systems Design & Technology at Southern Illinois University. Dr. Peter Fadde breaks down the science of pitch recognition and the valuable methods of training hitters to achieve this skill. Coach Sherman also explains occlusion training, and ways that his pitch recognition product at gameSense is preparing players and coaches to implement it into their training regimens. 

Show Notes:

• Guest: Dr. Peter Fadde, Chief Officer and Co-Founder of gameSense, and Associate Professor of Learning Systems Design & Technology at Southern Illinois University

Dr. Fadde explains the benefits of occlusion training

Dillan Lawson's presentation at Slugfest used a soccer player kicking a goal with the lights turned off 2/3 of the way to teach occlusion training

What is "pitch recognition" and how is it different from "plate discipline?"

Dr. Fadde's occlusion training offers the batter's view point facing the pitcher with a maximum possible score of 250

Video cued tee work is tee work that includes the timing off of the pitcher

Hitting baseballs is not like hitting golf balls or baseballs off of a tee

Vision training focuses on visual skills like dynamic tracking, acuity, peripheral vision, and focus

Pitch recognition should help hitters get the feel of the pitcher's wind-up

If you aren't looking at a pitcher, then it isn't really pitch recognition

Live drills for hitters to call out "yes" or "no" on a particular pitch type before the ball hits the catcher's mitt strengthens pitch recognition

The best form of pitch recognition is standing in the bullpen

Mike Schmidt wrote a fantastic books on hitting

Attention occlusion drills should keep the batter focusing on the pitcher, not the catcher

3 Key Points:

1.    Pitch recognition is the perceptual skill of making an actionable meaning out of the pitch you see.

 Your eyes can't track pitch speeds over 83 miles an hour all the way into the bat.
 Visualize the pitcher. Visualize the pitch. Visualize hitting that pitch.

"Human beings, and other animals, can learn incredible things with repetition, immediate feedback, and progressive difficulty." - Dr. Peter Fadde (5:04)

"When we say, 'somebody has a great instinct for it,' well, that's where we now say, 'ok, let's try to figure out exactly what that is.'" - Dr. Peter Fadde (6:32)

"Some guys like to have success at every level and build it up. And some guys just like to identify the wall they want to go through and then start smacking it." - Dr. Peter Fadde (14:41)

"The best way to practice recognizing pitches is to look at pitches." - Dr. Peter Fadde (30:56)

"A softball hitter really focusing on and getting good at pitch recognition could be looking at at a 20 or 25% improvement." - Dr. Peter Fadde (51:20)

Tweetable Quotes:

• "If you can test it, you can train it." - Dr. Peter Fadde (4:53)

Resources Mentioned:

Eye And Hand Dominance – Baseball Performance | Psyched Online

Great article on an under-rated area for development of baseball performance.

from PsychedOnline.com
Eye And Hand Dominance – Baseball Performance | Psyched Online:

Eye And Hand Dominance – Baseball Performance

By Paul Schienberg, PhD

Introduction: Background And History

Except for a few isolated cases, such as the preference of the lobster, crab and rat to use the right claw or paw, and the preference of cats to use their left paw, most animals are said to be ambidextrous and do not display lateral preference.

Preference for the right hand occurs in 90-95% of the population. Left hand preference is close to 10%. Ambidexterity occurs in approximately 5%. Left handedness is more common in males and in mentally retarded individuals (so if you are a male and retarded…..which to many women is redundant…..you figure it out.

Ocular or eye dominance is an entirely different situation. The first written description of ocular dominance is credited to Giovanni Battista della Porta in 1593. It was not until the late 20th century that serious attention was focused on this matter.

It might be expected that the eye that sees best is the dominant eye. This is not, in fact, the case. The dominant eye is usually considered to be the preferred eye for sighting. Eye dominance, preference or superiority is different from handedness or motor dominance.

Handedness is concerned primarily with motor aspects of motor organs. The eye is a sensory organ and has no conscious pro-prioception. And vision is for each eye represented bilaterally and equally in the brain in the occipital lobes, for most binocular animals. We have no consciousness of having a right and left eye as one is conscious of having a left and right hand. One does not see the world from a right or left eye, but from a single so called “cyclopean eye” which combines information from both.

When an athlete is asked to perform sighting tests, the cyclopean eye often seems to be located behind or close to one eye or the other. Eye dominance seems to be genetically predetermined. It is said that lateral dominance of a field of vision corresponding to the dominant eye, and it is easier for directional scanning to occur toward the field on the dominant eye and field. If persons are divided into only right or left eye dominance, then about 65% of the population is right eyed dominant and 35% are left eye dominant.

An individual who is right handed and right “eyed” or left handed and left “eyed” is said to have an uncrossed pattern of eye-hand dominance. Right handed and left “eyed” or vice versa is called crossed eye-hand dominance. There is no correlation between handedness and eye dominance.

A Study Of Baseball Performance

The study was conducted by a person (JMP) whose greatest frustration in childhood was that he didn’t become a good enough baseball player to make the major leagues. He could pitch but he could not hit a lick. He tired switch hitting and found much better success. He is right handed and has right eye dominant, uncrossed eye-hand dominant. He consulted his father’s history who was more successful in baseball. He found that his father was crossed eye-hand dominant, right handed with a dominant left eye, and had been a very successful batter, while uncrossed JMP had been a relatively successful pitcher. His father also had difficulty, in contrast, in pitching. The study looked a college varsity baseball team.

All twenty five, male, varsity athletes from the University of Florida baseball team were examined. Visual acuity, stereoscopic vision, ocular motility and eye sight dominance and handedness were established. All athletes batted the same “hand” as they threw except for one “switch hitter” who was right handed but who batter left handed.

Athletic performance was measured by data obtained from the prior year’s statistics. The pitchers were evaluated by their earned run average (ERA) and the hitters were rated by their by their batting average (BA).

Let me review some of the results of this study. College varsity level baseball players are twice as likely as the general population to have crossed dominance. The incidence of central eye dominance is considerably higher than the general population. The best hitters were centrally eye dominant or crossed eye-hand dominant. The poorest hitters were uncrossed eye-hand dominant. The top four pitchers were either uncrossed or centrally ocular dominant. Three of the top six pitchers were centrally ocular dominant.

What conclusion were the researchers able to draw from the results? There is strong support for the idea that the pattern of eye-hand dominance is significant and related to athletic success in baseball. There seems to be high probability that central ocular dominance helps athletes succeed in this form of athletic endeavor. The central ocular dominance players (batters and pitchers), whether right or left handed, were consistently and distinctly in the forefront. The central ocular dominant subgroup had both the best BA and the best ERA. The crossed eye-hand dominance pattern seems to be of benefit only to the batters – may even be a handicap to the pitchers. An uncrossed eye-hand dominance pattern is an advantage to the pitcher and a disadvantage to the hitter, and a crossed eye-hand dominance pattern is an advantage to the hitter and a disadvantage to the pitcher.

The situation for baseball hitting is very different from pitching in that the sighting action is to the side of the athlete. The explanation might be that there is increased ability of the eyes to sweep in the direction of the field of the side of the dominant eye. Certainly that is what the batter does. The pitcher is to his left and as he watches the pitcher he must make rapid sweeps of his eye from the plate in front of him to the pitcher on the mound, waiting for the pitch and watching the ball as it proceeds toward him. Even as the ball approaches him it is still primarily in his left gaze field, not the right gaze field, which it enters only when it crosses the plate and caught by the catcher. The batter must initiate his swing based on his vision of the ball’s course when it is perhaps only halfway or so from the pitcher to the plate, so it is irrelevant that the ball finally crosses into his right visual field as it crosses the plate. It is for these reasons why the crossed eye-hand dominant player is at some advantage in the batting situation over the uncrossed dominant player. The best combination for a baseball player would be a left handed centrally ocular dominant, or if not centrally ocular dominant, a left handed crossed eye dominant person. Many successful players do not follow this formula however.

Conclusions

Among those athletes that possess the other necessary qualities (speed, fast reactions times, coordination, competitiveness, etc.) for success, it may be that ocular dominance and the pattern of eye-hand dominance is another variable that is measurable and predictable.

Eye hand dominance could serve as a factor in scouting athletes, or guiding a young player on whether to hit left or right handed or to switch hit. It may be possible to determine what sport to concentrate on, as knowledge grows concerning the relations between ocular dominance and patterns of eye-hand dominance in other sports. Tennis is a natural next sport for examination
.

Neuroscience Can Project On-Base Percentages Now | FanGraphs Baseball

Once this type of data can be incorporated into scouting and player development, there will be less draft mistakes and better hitters. 

Subject: Neuroscience Can Project On-Base Percentages Now | FanGraphs Baseball

from fangraphs.com

https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/neuroscience-can-project-batting-lines-now/

Neuroscience Can Project On-Base Percentages Now

Eno Sarris

I have an early, hazy memory of Benito Santiago explaining to a reporter the approach that had led to his game-winning hit moments earlier. "I see the ball, I hit it hard," said Santiago in his deep accent. From which game, in what year, I can't remember. Also, it isn't really important: it's a line we've heard before. Nevertheless, it contains multitudes.

We know, for example, that major-league hitters have to see well to hit well. Recent research at Duke University has once again made explicit the link between eye sight, motor control, and baseball outcomes. This time, though, they've split out some of the skills involved, and it turns out that Santiago's deceptively simple description involves nuanced levels of neuromotor activity, each predictive of different aspects of a hitter's abilities. Will our developing knowledge about those different skills help us better sort young athletes, or better develop them? That part's to be determined.

A team of researchers spread across Duke ran baseball players from two full professional organizations through a battery of nine tests on Nike Sensory Stations to measure different aspects of a player's sensory motor abilities. After creating something similar to Major League Equivalency lines for each player, the researchers were able to test the effect of each of the scores against real-life baseball outcomes.

"If you have a 23-year-old, completely average outfielder, the model predicts that his on-base percentage in the major leagues would be .292," explains Kyle Burris, one of the researchers on the project. "The model would expect a similar player who scores one standard deviation higher on the perception span task to have an OBP of .300."

The high-level, easy takeaway from their study is that these skills, taken as a whole, are predictive of good plate discipline. There was no link to slugging percentage, though, so we're not quite yet predicting full batting lines from your neuromotor scores.

But if you drill down a bit into these new findings, you'll see that there is a great deal here to get excited about. Here's a profound image that shows how each subsection of the larger skill set was linked to baseball outcomes. Darker colors denote a stronger relationship between the skill and the baseball statistic.

A table of findings reprinted with permission from Kyle Burris, Kelly Vittetoe, Benjamin Ramger, Sunith Suresh, Surya T. Tokdar, Jerome P. Reiter & L. Gregory Appelbaum "Sensorimotor abilities predict on-field performance in professional baseball" in Scientific ReportsTake a look at the row labeled "perception span," in particular, and you find an interesting story. That task was linked to good on-base percentages and strikeout rates, but not necessarily good walk rates.

"It's kind of like a game of Simon," says Burris as he tries to explain the perception-span task, "but for a split second, it gives you shapes that appear in various aspects of your peripheral vision, and you have to determine was there a square there, or a pentagon there, and it flashed at you in a split second and you have to try and remember what the shape was."
When we asked players what they see when the ball is released, a good portion of the responses detailed how little is ultimately visible to the eye. And there's that study of cricket which suggests that cricket players get more from information they gather before the release of the ball than after. This finding fits right in: players who are good at noticing things on the periphery — like the way a forearm might look different on a breaking ball, or the way the body might drag on a changeup — are better at making contact.
Hidden within the other differences between the tasks and their links to outcomes is a similar story: both the ability to suss out quickly the difference between shapes seen both near and far, and also to capture a target quickly were both good for making contact. That makes sense.

But why would hand-eye coordination be better for player's walk rate than his strikeout rate?

Partly, this could be because players have to start their swing before they know if they want to swing — a requirement velocity puts upon them — and hand-eye coordination helps them to better stop that swing if the pitch is a ball.

Partly, this could be a result of the limited capacity for actually testing hand-eye coordination. The particular task linked to that number requires respondents to tap baseballs as they appear on a screen, testing how fast they can do so.
"I'm not sure that it actually goes and tests hand-eye coordination," admitted Burris, who is headed to Cleveland for a summer internship with the Indians. "There is a little bit of hand-eye coordination in that you have to see it and then immediately translate that to a motor response, but I'd say that that was almost response-time-esque."

If you look at the separate reaction-time outcomes, you'll see a similar link to walk rate, so maybe that's the key skill in taking walk. Reacting quicker.
Or there's another way to separate the skills. You could consider the first three tasks — visual clarity, contrast sensitivity, and depth perception — as "hardware." They're linked to outcomes, of course, because there's a decent part of the game that requires good eye sight. But they're the sort of thing with which you're born.

"There will never be a blind ballplayer," said co-author Gregory Appelbaum.
Those other six tasks, though? They represent the software of our neuromotor system. They represent our ability to take the visual information given to us and process it. Software is more malleable, subject to updates. Software can be changed for the better.

"There is evidence that these processes can be improved," agreed Appelbaum. "There have been demonstrations of neuroplasticity in these processes."
Appelbaum pointed to two interesting studies that pointed to the fact that our neuromotor system's software could be trained. A study from 2015 of which he was part showed that "significant learning was observed in tasks with high visuomotor control demands but not in tasks of visual sensitivity," for one.
A 2014 study at the University of California-Riverside found that actual baseball outcomes could be improved by using a "perceptual learning program." In that study, players reported improvements such as being able to see further, and having eyes that felt stronger and didn't tire as quickly.
Appelbaum is ready to find out what these visual training technologies will look like as we go forward. He's helping launch the Duke Vision Sports Center, a clinic and lab where researchers will use sensory stations, immersive reality, and more, in order to pursue this line of thinking.

When it comes to new stats coming out of Statcast, I've personally seen a change in how players assess the numbers. Early distaste has given away to curiosity, as more players — Yonder Alonso and Andrew Heaney, for example, in my own experience — now speak up at the end of interviews to ask me about launch angle, exit velocity, and how they can use that data to train and improve.

So, while the Boston Red Sox have long been using the link between neuromotor skills and baseball outcomes in their minor leagues in an effort to bring "neuroscouting" to their own organization, these new findings offer a different use for neuromotor study. Instead of sorting players, there's major potential to use these activities to develop players and get the most out of them.
There may never be a blind baseball player, sure. But that's just hardware. Let's see how we can make the most out of our favorite player's software.

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The Sixth Tool: Training Baseball Pitch Recognition - MIT Sloan Analytics Conference

 

An objective tool to measure pitch recognition skill before the fact is HUGE in terms of both scouting and developing players. When the intangible becomes tangible, that's a huge leap, IMO. 

Subject: The Sixth Tool: Training Baseball Pitch Recognition - MIT Sloan Analytics Conference

http://www.sloansportsconference.com/content/the-sixth-tool-training-baseball-pitch-recognition/

The skill of pitch recognition, measured with metrics such as 0-Swing%, Line Drive %, and BB/K ratio, is so important that it's become a virtual sixth tool in baseball. But it's generally considered to be more a talent than a learned skill … and therefore not trainable. This talk describes and demonstrates a new approach that adapts the video-occlusion method developed in sport science research laboratories in order to both test and train this elusive perceptual-cognitive skill. Running on a laptop computer, video-occlusion can be used to measure the pitch recognition ability of prospects, diagnose pitch recognition problems, and systematically develop pitch recognition skill in high-performance baseball batters.

To see presentation slides click here

Sent from my iPhone

Study analyzes visual tracking strategies in baseball - UPI.com

http://perceptionaction.com/softfocus/

from upi.com

https://www.upi.com/Study-analyzes-visual-tracking-strategies-in-baseball/3351501861093/

Study analyzes visual tracking strategies in baseball

Aug. 4 (UPI) -- Researchers from Ohio State University's College of Optometry have found that batters change their visual tracking strategies depending on whether they swing or not.

The study, published in the August edition of Optometry and Vision Science, measured horizontal eye and head movements in two collegiate baseball players who were up to bat with a pitching machine.

Researchers found that patterns of head and eye movements are slightly different when batters are swinging compared to "taking" a pitch, meaning not swinging at a pitch.
The study tracked head movements in the baseball players by using an inertial sensor mounted on the players' helmets. Eye movements were tracked using a video eye tracker, both showed differences in tracking when swinging compared to not swinging at pitches.

The two batters followed a similar visual strategy in swinging and taking a pitch, however, when not swinging, they mainly moved their heads, not their eyes, toward the ball the majority of time the ball was in the air.

When the ball was about 150 milliseconds from arriving, the batters shifted their eyes ahead of the ball when it crossed the plate. 

"Large eye movements only occurred late in the pitch trajectory," the researchers said in a news release.

Conversely, when the batters were swinging at the ball, they followed a different visual strategy with head movements toward the ball being substantially larger than eye movements. The batters focused their eye on the ball up until about 50 milliseconds before it crossed the plate.

Researchers believe their findings support previous research that placing the gaze ahead of the ball is the optimal learning strategy and tracking the ball is the optimal hitting strategy.

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What's the secret to hitting a sharp-breaking curve ball?

This is what the curve looked like to me at times and I swung at where the ball was rather than where it was going to be. Good to know why I sucked at this though, my inner algorithm was off. Keeping the ball in the center of your visual field seems to be the key takeaway. Visual skills are important and trainable. 

from Daily Mall:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3135444/The-secret-hitting-curveball-Scientists-reveal-sharp-break-movement-mind.html

The secret to hitting a curveball: Scientists reveal how the sharp 'break' in the ball's movement is all in the mind

• Our brains track moving objects using a similar algorithm to GPS
• The algorithm estimates location based on its past position and speed
• We do the same thing when perceiving position in our visual periphery
• Knowing this can help us counteract the effect, the study claims

 Our brains track moving objects by applying one of the algorithms your phone's GPS uses, according to researchers at the University of Rochester. This same algorithm also explains why we are fooled by several motion-related optical illusions, including the sudden 'break' of baseball's well known 'curveball illusion'

Scientists at the University of Rochester say that our brains apply an algorithm, known as a Kalman filter, when tracking a baseball. 

In GPS devices, algorithms, including the Kalman filter, are used to estimate the location of your car based on its past position and speed.   

'Like GPS, our visual ability, although quite impressive, has many limitations,' said the study's coauthor, Duje Tadin, associate professor of brain and cognitive sciences at the University of Rochester.

We see an object's position with great accuracy when it's in the center of our visual field. 

But the same can't be said for perceiving position when it shifts into our visual periphery.

Scientists reveal the secret of how to hit a curveball

When that happens, our brain gives greater emphasis to our perception of the object's motion.

'And, this is where we start seeing fascinating phenomena like the curveball illusion,' said Tadin. 

THE SCIENCE BEHIND THE ILLUSION 

We see an object's position with great accuracy when it's in the center of our visual field. 

But the same can't be said for perceiving position when it shifts into our visual periphery.

When that happens, our brain gives greater emphasis to our perception of the object's motion. 

When it is viewed in the visual periphery, the spin of the ball - the motion of the seam pattern - can make it appear to be in a different location than it really is.

So, when the ball enters your periphery, it appears to make an abrupt shift: The sudden 'break' of the curveball as it nears home plate. 

'We've found that the same algorithm that is used by GPS to track vehicles also explains why we perceive the curveball illusion.'

'A curveball pitch does indeed curve,' said the first author Oh-Sang Kwon, assistant professor at Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology, South Korea.

'But when it is viewed in the visual periphery, the spin of the ball - the motion of the seam pattern - can make it appear to be in a different location than it really is.'

Here, the brain 'knows' that position estimates are unreliable in the periphery, so it relies more on other visual cues, which, in this case, is the motion; the spin of the ball.

So, when the ball enters your periphery, it appears to make an abrupt shift: The sudden 'break' of the curveball as it nears home plate.

The optimal solution that our brain comes up with belies the actual behavior - and trajectory - of the ball, and the result is an optical illusion.

This means you have a better chance of hitting a curveball by realising that our brains, like GPS, can lead us to 'see' changes in speed or direction that don't actually occur.

'These illusions should not be seen as evidence that our brains are poor at perceiving the world around us, though,' explained Tadin. 

'They are interesting side-effects of neural processes that, in most cases, are extremely efficient at processing 'noisy' visual information.'