Professional pitchers fire balls toward the plate at speeds nearing 100 mph, but players still manage to hit a good number of homers every year. As a fan, you might wonder if batters would have even more success if they could hit a stationary ball. Would a big-league version of T-ball produce even more lightning shots out of the park? The answer comes down to the physics of the game.
Velocity and Power
A pitch from a professional baseball player leaves the pitcher's hand and hurtles toward the plate at 80 to 90-plus mph. On contact with the batter's bat, the bat has to not only stop the ball, but reverse its direction of travel. This reversal uses up a lot of energy, it would seem. So you might guess that if the bat didn't have to counteract the effect of the pitcher driving the ball toward the plate, then the full force of the batter's swing could send a stationary ball flying farther. However, according to the Exploratorium scientific website, the ball retains some of the energy from the pitcher's throw and adds this to the energy gained from the bat. It uses this to propel the ball farther than it would if it only drew on the energy from the bat.
Momentum
Momentum allows the ball to travel farther. A ball already in motion loses only a little momentum as it changes direction. A ball sitting on a tee has no momentum at all. It loses energy getting going from a standstill.
Other Factors
In addition to the speed of both the bat and the ball, other factors affect how far a baseball will travel. Batters strive to hit the ball slightly underneath, to drive it up, providing lift and counteracting the effect of gravity. But you can't hit the ball too far underneath on a T stand because it will pop up and come right back down, gaining height but not a lot of distance. On humid days, the air the ball has to travel through is heavier, providing more resistance, and the ball won't travel as far. And finally, at altitude, balls travel farther because of less air resistance. For this reason, Coors Field in Denver, Colorado, at more than 5,000 feet above sea level, built a humidor in 2002 to keep baseballs at 50 percent humidity.
Hitting Off a Tee
Though hitting a stationery ball doesn't allow the batter to drive the ball farther, professional players still hit off a tee in practice. Hitting a ball on a tee allows the batter to perfect his swing without having to worry about pitching. He can adjust his stance or the mechanics of his swing in practice on a tee, then translate these skills into hitting live balls.
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