What Really Allows Hard Contact By Hitters?

By PERRY HUSBAND
Special To Collegiate Baseball

PALMDALE, Calif. — The biggest question in baseball is what allows hard contact by hitters?

Pitchers who limit hard contact dominate and hitters who create more of it are at the top of the sport. This is the core question that sparked all the research that went into the discovery of Effective Velocity.

Ev is the science that introduced Ev Pitch Tunnels, Movement Mechanics or the use of tilt axis, arm angle and spins to make the ball move, Pitch Recognition Training and much more.

Pitchers are throwing harder every year, and with modern technology, they are creating “better stuff.”

But are they using their “stuff” better? To do damage, hitters have to be close to 100% on time, and their swing needs to be at or near 100% efficient.

The Effective Velocity hitting term for perfect contact is 100-100, a line in the sand to measure all contact against. To break the sound barrier, planes must go 767 mph. If they get close, they’re going fast, but they didn’t create a sonic boom.

To measure anything, there must be a true north to measure from, and in hard contact, that is 100-100.

Think of all pitches as 1’s – 2’s – 3’s or 4’s.

Fastballs located up and inside are 1’s, fastballs away or down are 2’s, the harder off-speed pitches like cutters and splits are 3’s, and 4’s are slower off-speed, mostly curveballs.

This illustration above shows 3 different pitches going to 3 different locations at 3 different speeds from a RHP.

One pitch is a 93 mph fastball located away. The other is a hard split-finger that is 90 mph located middle and the last is a slider at 87 MPH located inside. 

All 3 pitches will “run into” the barrel at different points in the same swing, not the same time but the same swing timing.

This is Effective Velocity in a nutshell. 

All 3 pitches have the same EvMPH or “true reactionary speed.”

These pitches would be great examples of 2’s and 3’s in action and roughly 2/3 of all MLB pitches are 2’s and 3’s.

This is a hint as to the earlier question of whether pitchers are using their “stuff better.”

The bulk of pitches are being thrown directly into the speed range hitters are most geared to.

A pitchers’ next chess move will put hitting on a whole new level of difficulty if they change this approach.  

Hitter’s Attention
Ev Pitch Tunnels are when 2 pitches share the same horizontal and vertical planes for at least 20 feet of pitch flight, then split apart going to 2 different areas of the zone with large speed spreads between them.

To read more of this story, purchase the May 6, 2022 edition of Collegiate Baseball or subscribe by CLICKING HERE. This in-depth story delves into visual and reactionary skills, the reactionary test, experiment with 14,000 at-bats, 100-100 perfect contact, MLB data, Biola Ev study and Ev Pitch Sequencing which features a number of graphics and charts.