Trevor Bauer

So the ball leaves your hand.

Swing time for a hitter, elite swing time is like .16 seconds from the time they decide to swing to the time that the bat actually gets into the hitting zone.

So if you take .4 minus .16, you end up with .24.

So they basically have a quarter of a second to identify...

what pitch it is, how hard is it, what location is it, what movement it's going to have.

So really what they're reacting to is, so any difference, the way it breaks down is if you pick a catcher signs and you know the pitch ahead of time, that obviously matters.

If the pitcher comes set in a different way or has some sort of tip, you can identify, before he even starts his delivery, what pitch it's going to be.

Most times, those two things aren't happening.

So then you go into the pitcher's delivery.

Is his glove squeezing on fastball and not on breaking ball?

Is his glove higher or lower on breaking ball?

There's a lot of pitchers out there that'll tip pitches like that.

And hitters can see those things, and so it tips them off what pitch it's going to be.

So that'll tip you off on speed and movement.

Not location, but you'll at least have a better chance.

But if you're not tipping your pitches in one of those three ways, the next thing they look for is body position.

So sometimes pitchers will be like here on one pitch and they'll be like this on another pitch.

And so hitters can kind of pick that up before the ball is released from your hand.

So if you don't do any of those things, it makes it extremely hard for the hitter.

The next thing that they pick up is trajectory.