The 10-second 100-meter sprint. The four-minute mile. The two-hour marathon. In baseball, is the 110 mph fastball the subsequent large quantity to fall? What truly is the higher restrict on the subject of skilled pitchers throwing their quickest pitches?
There is a few debate about what the quickest fastball thus far has been. In the documentary Fastball, filmmakers checked out a few key moments from the previous. Bob Feller threw a ball quicker than an 86 mph motorbike. Nolan Ryan was clocked at 100.8 mph by a radar gun in 1974. If you exchange Ryan’s quantity to the out-of-the-hand methodology used to measure pitch velocity in the present day, you get 108 mph. For some, that counts because the quickest pitch on report.
We’ve been monitoring major-league pitchers with the identical high quality of know-how since 2007, although, and no one has thrown tougher than Aroldis Chapman and his 105.8 mph fastball in 2010. So Ryan’s 108 could be a massive departure from 15 years of monitoring pitches — and, for what it’s price, it’s a massive departure from radar gun readings over the remainder of his sport that day, in addition to the remainder of his profession, which often topped out round 96 and 97 mph.
Some Nolan Ryan gun readings to indicate how random Radar gun/Laser know-how was again within the day. pic.twitter.com/BAuEMAbTIM
— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) January 20, 2024
Since these different pitchers had been clocked utilizing outdated know-how, it’s in all probability fairest to name 105.8 mph the fashionable report in fastball velocity. So that’s how fast a human has thrown the ball. But what’s the quickest a human being could throw the ball?
“When you build up a simple physics model that is essentially a series of collisions between body parts, you get a max fastball velocity of about 125 mph,” mentioned Jimmy Buffi, who has a PhD in biomedical engineering. Buffi is a former Los Angeles Dodgers analyst and is a co-founder of Reboot Motion, a participant growth consultancy agency.
“We’ll need to use new methods,” mentioned Kyle Boddy, present Boston Red Sox marketing consultant and the founding father of Driveline Baseball, a participant growth lab and consultancy firm. “If there is a way to continue on, it won’t be with current methods. Using the best mechanics from elite pitchers, piecemeal, is unlikely to be the way we can create the 110 mph pitcher.”
Others thought in regards to the potential for harm on this pursuit – pitching accidents have been up with velocity, in any case. Maybe we’re already on the restrict?
“I don’t think people are going to be able to throw that hard,” mentioned the Dodgers’ Bobby Miller, the league’s third-hardest throwing starter, about numbers like 110 and 125 mph. “You reach a certain point where your arm will probably break.”
That’s three completely different solutions. Let’s take a nearer take a look at every.
The case for 125 mph
There’s a idea in pitching known as the “kinetic chain,” which describes the switch of pressure from the bottom, and the bigger muscle mass within the legs, up via the core and out to the top of the arm. If you’re employed in a purely theoretical house, that chain is mainly a bunch of interactions that try and preserve the momentum created down low because it travels out to the arm. Buffi’s job at ReBoot is to assist make these transfers as environment friendly as potential. He created a physics mannequin to explain them for the needs of answering this query.
“To come up with this toy example,” he mentioned, “I thought of the pitching motion as essentially a series of energy transfers between two masses, similar to a large ball colliding with a smaller ball. The legs are the larger mass, and they transfer energy to the torso, which transfers energy to the upper arm, then to the forearm, then to the hand, then to the ball.”
A pitcher’s kinetic chain consists of six phases. (Graphic: Drew Jordan / The Athletic; photograph of Paul Skenes: Rick Osentoski / Getty Images)
The relative sizes of every of these muscle teams govern the quantity of power that may be transferred in every interplay, simply as it’s within the traditional physics downside through which a large ball hits a smaller ball. In the mannequin that Buffi created, a 200-pound particular person placing 500 kilos of pressure into the bottom whereas being 85 % environment friendly in his transfers (an effectivity that’s elite, however throughout the vary of risk, in his estimation) would throw 125 mph.
“Even though it’s a toy example, when you put in reasonable energy transfer numbers and ground reaction force values, you actually get reasonable pitching velocity estimates,” mentioned Buffi.
One of in the present day’s hardest throwers, Oakland nearer Mason Miller, agrees that the scale of the participant and pressure into the bottom was a frequent denominator once you take a look at the toughest throwers.
“Physically, I’m 230 pounds, maybe 240 at my biggest. Chapman is like 250 pounds,” mentioned Miller. He has thrown the fourth-fastest pitch this season at 103.7 mph, which trails solely a couple Chapman fastballs (one at 104) and one from Angels reliever Ben Joyce. “Force production into the ground is important, we’ve seen that from force plate testing, that’s a good measure of power production.”
But there are some flaws on this case. Ground pressure reactions north of those Buffi used have been recorded already by athletes at Driveline Baseball, and so they didn’t throw 125 mph. It’s means out in entrance of what’s been noticed, as nicely.
Said Miller: “125 seems like it’s way out of our current existence.”
“Oh my goodness, 125, that’s crazy,” mentioned Twins’ nearer Jhoan Duran, who has topped out at 104.8 mph.
The case for 110 mph
The examine of biomechanics, or the mechanical legal guidelines referring to the motion and construction of dwelling organisms, has unlocked velocity for a lot of in the present day’s arduous throwers. The common four-seam main league fastball, measured by the identical know-how and methodology, has elevated in velocity each season since Major League Baseball began monitoring it, all the way in which from 91.1 mph in 2007 to 94.1 now.
Sam Hellinger of Driveline Baseball shared an instance of how this understanding of the physique has helped gamers prepare to get extra velocity. Justin Thorsteinson, a former Division I pitcher hoping to signal on with a company, got here to them throwing 87.7 mph in June and by August was throwing 91.5 mph, and his altering how his shoulder moved was key. Scapular retraction — in rudimentary phrases, how far again the throwing shoulder reaches earlier than coming ahead — has been linked to velocity by biomechanics research as a result of it creates a large separation between the hip and the shoulder. As that separation snaps again like a rubber band, torso velocity is accelerated, which is then transferred to the arm. That was a large focus for Thorsteinson.
“Based on Justin’s bio report, we determined that his most glaring need mechanically was his arm action, specifically his max shoulder external rotation and scapular retraction,” mentioned Hellinger.
After some work with weighted balls and particular drills, Thorsteinson improved his scores within the particular biomechanics that they had been concentrating on, as you may see additionally from this image, which reveals how a lot he improved his shoulder retraction.
Before (left) and after (proper) for Justin Thorsteinson, exhibiting extra shoulder retraction after the drills. (Driveline Baseball)
So could a 250-pound monster of an athlete refine every of his actions to the most effective of present information and bust previous the 106 mph ceiling in the direction of the 110 mph that Boddy thought potential?
“If you’re getting bigger than Chapman, who throws 105, if you get any bigger, you lose coordination,” mentioned Dodgers starter Walker Buehler. “He’s as big and as strong as you can be, and his delivery is all about velo.”
Boddy can also be unsure that a large dude, plus the most effective piecemeal mechanics of our time, was the appropriate means ahead.
“We’ll need to use new methods, like simulation of human movement with millions of synthetic data points using machine learning and artificial intelligence to explore the entire latent space of possible mechanical outputs and muscular contributions to the throwing motion,” mentioned Boddy. “This is something Driveline Baseball has been working on for years and is rapidly becoming a priority project — primarily for durability improvements over performance gains, though we anticipate breakthroughs in both realms over the coming years from our Sports Science and Research teams.”
In different phrases, as a substitute of taking our legendary 250-pound flamethrower after which giving him what fashionable analysis thinks is the most effective mechanics within the legs, the torso, the shoulder, and the arms, Boddy is hoping that AI could assist us consider new methods these physique components could transfer in live performance with one another, in an effort to establish even higher potential mechanics.
Could AI do that? Given the speedy rise of that know-how, it appears believable that we could see features from re-evaluating present processes, even ones that contain the motion of our our bodies.
The case for 106 mph
Let’s flip over to a completely different sport for a second. Over within the 100-meter sprint, now we have data going again to the Nineteen Seventies. If we observe the most effective instances by 12 months, it seems to be like we’re hitting a little bit of an asymptote — as a substitute of huge features like we noticed within the Eighties and ’90s, we’re preventing over smaller increments of change.
If you altitude-adjust these numbers — operating increased up can shave some milliseconds, as we noticed with a couple of record-breaking runs earlier this century — we’re zeroing in round 9.7 to 9.8 seconds as maybe the quickest a runner can handle in a impartial setting. This is seen by some to indicate that fashionable coaching, vitamin, and tools have pushed the physique so far as it may well go. There are related graphs in different operating sports activities that counsel the identical.
A couple of examples from different sports activities:
100m dash, marathon & 1 mile world report progressions pic.twitter.com/6z5nhPPbdP
— Ben Brewster (@TreadAthletics) May 28, 2024
The most pitch velocity appears to be following a related trajectory in baseball. Chapman threw 105.8 mph in 2010 and since then, the common greatest fastball has been 104, with a peak of 105.7 (Chapman once more in 2016) and a nadir of 102.2 (in 2020, after all). The greatest non-Chapman fastball is round 104 mph in any given season.
There are some variations between pitching and operating, although. Here’s the place Glenn Fleisig, the director of biomechanics analysis on the American Sports Medicine Institute, is available in.
“Fifteen years ago I was quoted as saying that I didn’t think top velocity or the ceiling going up, but I foresee it getting pretty crowded at the ceiling,” mentioned Fleisig. “It wasn’t a lucky guess that I pulled out of my butt.”
“When others talk about the ceiling, they talk about physics and statistics. Maybe by the laws of physics, maybe people could throw faster. Maybe the highest number could keep going up like it (did) for runners, because the training can improve, the mechanics and biomechanics can improve, the nutrition and supplements can improve,” he continued.
“The difference here is that we’re pushing this little ulnar collateral ligament to its limit. We are strengthening our muscles and improving our mechanics and nutrition, but based on how the body is built, the ligaments and tendons don’t improve proportionally to the other parts of the body and the process.”
When that ligament tears, the pitcher wants Tommy John surgical procedure to get again on the mound, and people surgical procedures are extra frequent than ever. How a lot stress that ligament can deal with is likely to be up for debate.
“No one really knows how much stress a UCL can really take, because of a problem I call cadavers and robots,” mentioned Randy Sullivan of the Florida Baseball ARMory on a latest podcast. “We determined how much stress a UCL can take through a cadaver setting where we found that it tears at 35 newton-meters of torque, and then we used motion capture to determine that it can tolerate on a single pitch, it has to accept 70-75 nM of stress. We got the bottom number from a person who wasn’t alive; living tissue wouldn’t react the same way. And we got the top number from a model, a mythical robot.”
Fleisig, who authored the examine that checked out how a lot stress the UCL could deal with in cadavers, noticed that second quantity in a barely completely different gentle.
Throwing high-velocity pitches places a nice deal of stress on a pitcher’s UCL. (Drew Jordan / The Athletic)
“That 70-75 nM dynamic stress from biomechanics analysis is on the entire elbow, and the UCL does about a third of that resistance, your bones and tendons help with that resistance,” he factors out. Taking a third of 75 nM leaves the present stress on the elbow throughout the 35 nM most we see in cadavers.
The sport is likely to be telling us one thing with the spike in arm accidents. All these torn ligaments, that are more and more tied to top-end velocity by the most effective out there analysis, appear to counsel that we’re operating up on the bodily limits of that little tendon. Maybe 106 is all that we are able to do.
“I’ve thought about it before,” mentioned Joyce, the Los Angeles Angels pitcher who has thrown the toughest this 12 months and likewise had a fastball tracked at 105.5 mph in school. “I would think someone will hit 106.0, but I don’t know if there is much more than that.”
Where can we go from right here?
The work to enhance the ceiling will go on, it doesn’t matter what accidents say, due to the reward system in place for pitchers who can throw arduous. The highest draft picks, the most important free-agent contracts — these go to the quickest fastballs, and that’s not prone to change within the brief time period.
Joyce has an an identical twin who tops out at 98 mph, with related mechanics and an identical genes. So what separated Ben from his brother Zach?
“I didn’t do anything specific,” mentioned the harder-throwing Joyce. “I just always wanted to throw hard, so I tried to throw harder every day, kept throwing harder and harder, and it eventually worked out.”
Joyce identified that he hadn’t actually optimized his mechanics or performed something particular in that regard. He’s simply throwing 103 and 104 on pure willpower. He’s additionally a little smaller than Miller and Chapman. Maybe the subsequent child is 50 kilos heavier, has that very same iron will, finally ends up as a reliever the place he can max out on fewer pitches, and likewise optimizes his biomechanics. That state of affairs appears prone to push the top-end velocity some … however how a lot increased if that little ligament is taking all it may well deal with already?
If that mixture of inputs solely pushes most velocity ahead a tick or two, it would behoove younger pitchers to think about different targets as they arrive up the ranks. In different phrases, if we get to a level the place everybody throws tougher than 94 mph within the large leagues, however no one actually throws tougher than 106, possibly one of the best ways to stay out sooner or later might be to exhibit a pitch combine with various velocities and actions, with good command. Maybe the success of softer-throwing pitchers such because the Royals’ Seth Lugo, who throws eight completely different pitches from two completely different arm slots, and the Phillies’ Ranger Suárez, who retains the ball on the bottom with nice command, can present new function fashions for younger pitchers.
As the accidents mount within the seek for velocity, chasing a most quantity which may not even be potential is probably not the most effective plan for a younger arm desirous about making probably the most out of his expertise.
— The Athletic’s Sam Blum contributed to this story.
(Top picture: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic; Photo of Paul Skenes: Justin Okay. Aller / Getty Images)