Fastpitch and Radar Guns - Necessary or Not?

Fastpitch is a very dynamic game. Especially the pitching. Everyone wants to know how fast that pitch was or "What do you throw?". Batters seem to think that if they know the speed of the pitcher they can gain an advantage. Coaches want to know so they can give better signals to the batter and the base runners. Parents and fans want to know for lots of reasons, my kid throws as fast as the olympic stars, or that kid doesn't throw very hard she can't be any good, things like that.

I have been around the sport for many years and I have seen a lot of pitchers. I have seen girls that can legitimately throw 70 mph and others that struggle to hit 45 mph. I've seen boys baseball pitchers that hit in the low 90's but most were in the mid 50's. I've seen the really hard pitchers get knocked out of the park and the slow pitchers strike out almost the whole team.

Being an electronics engineer by education I have been fortunate to be involved in the design and development of a few sports radar guns. I've reverse engineered some to see how they work and spent countless hours tweaking algorithms to help the DSP determine the characteristics of a softball as it travels through space and time. Wait, this isn't a Star Trek article is it?

I can tell you that most radar guns out there are very similar and are very accurate. The difference is in the price and the features. Some are developed specifically for baseball and softball so they have more finely tuned algorithms to track the ball. Some offer statistics and other nice features. Others are designed to be a more overall sports gun to track softballs, golf balls, cars, bicycles, boats and most anything. I will tell you, those are the most challenging ones to develop.

I don't want to bore you with the physics of radar guns, I want to talk more about whether you think they are necessary in fastpitch. Does it really matter what the real speed of that pitch is?

I think it does - sometimes. What the heck is this guy saying!!! Well, as a pitcher's dad and coach I like to use the speed tracking to help the pitchers understand where they are in their development.

Are they actually getting faster, or staying the same. How does this pitch work at faster speeds vs slower speeds? The differential of a Changeup - the most important I think. Those kinds of stats are of the most concern to me.

I really don't think the speed makes all that much difference once you get into the mid to upper 50's anyway. I will acknowledge that a 70 mph pitch is gonna blast right by most batters the first time they see it. But if that pitcher doesn't have a good off speed pitch and doesn't use it often, the batters will time that barn burner and blast it out of the park. After all - Newtons laws of motion are gonna take care of that for you. Number 3 I think says something about - Any object in motion will stay in motion unless acted upon by another force -

Basically, the faster the pitch, the faster and farther it will travel when hit.

Ok, enough physics, this isn't school. But you get the point I hope. Using a radar gun and perhaps a spin tracking device are very good tools to use to help the young and more advanced pitchers develop into great pitchers.

I'm sure that the fastpitch catchers are not fans of the 70 mph pitchers. I know from experience that you can definitely tell the difference between a 55 mph pitch and 69 mph pitch. The "sting factor" goes up exponentially!

So, use the tools you have whether it is a radar gun or a stop watch and good math skills. Take advantage of those tools and help those young student athletes develop into great student athletes.