♫ brave ♫

- Pretty good harmony!

- Not bad. - Yeah, that was real good.

(upbeat music)

- Baseball!

Here we are at P3.

- Our friend Rodney hooked us up

with this amazing sports science facility.

- We're going to put you guys through some testing today

that we would put any pro baseball

athlete through, actually.

- I played Little League baseball

up until about fourth grade.

The pitching started getting faster

and I got scared.

- [Voiceover] I never got to the level of baseball

where another human throws the ball at you.

- Coming into this,

I am coming in like a baseball virgin.

- I have never swung a bat. I mean--

- I'm the only one of use that even plays sports,

and now I got a broken,

I can't even participate.

- I don't think I've ever held a mitt, honestly.

- Just, just terrible, just horrible.

- Cool!

- The goal for today is to not sprain anything.

- I just want to come out of here in one piece.

- This is the wrong hand.

- [Voiceover] It goes on, if you're right-handed.

- Oh! Ah!

- It's going to be a fun one!

- Almost everything we do in baseball,

we're going to start off with a lateral stance.

We're going to look at how much horizontal force

that we can create.

We want to see how much lateral drive you guys have,

and then how much you can actually apply

in a sport-specific baseball manner.

- So you guys have seen them make a video game before?

Same technology.

- We're going to get, like, motion tracking on us.

- Benny, hit the lights. Boom.

- What!

- [Voiceover] That's so cool!

- So basically all force plates are,

they're high-tech scales.

They tell us how much force

you're going to be putting into the ground

in real time as you go through any movements.

- (mumbles) rate, all that kind of stuff.

- Everything.

- I feel like a superhero.

- We're going to see, standing on this plate,

pushing off your back foot,

how far out can you go.

- [Voiceover] Go, Keith, go!

Go, Keith, go!

- All right, 6.78 for Keith.

- What's a good number?

- Think big, baby, think big!

- Look at that face, Ned.

- That's 6.9.

- Yes!

- The average baseball player is putting up

a little over 9 Newtons per kilogram.

So you're a little below that.

- So how are we going to succeed on the field?

- It's got to be the "it" factor.

- The computer can't tell that.

- [Woody] Base running, you have to wait

until the guy hits the ball.

In this case with a left-handed pitcher on the mound,

since he's facing you,

you're not sure if he's throwing to the plate

or he's trying to pick you off.

- [Keith] Oooh!

- So we're going to run through a couple of scenarios

where he's either going to throw it to home,

and you're going to try to steal,

or he's going to try to pick you guys off,

you guys got to try to dive back in safe.

- I'm excited, in that sort of fear-driven excitement.

- You know I don't really pose a threat,

so why waste a pitch?

- Ah!

- I'm giving him the "steal" signal.

- [Voiceover] Steal, steal, steal, steal, steal!

- Oh!

- [Voiceover] Keith, you're out.

- [Voiceover] Hand up, man, hand up.

- My doctor would kill me.

- [Voiceover] Go!

- When we talk about baseball,

it's just a drop-dead rotational ballistic power sport.

This machine is going to measure

how much rotational power that you guys can create.

So let's just warm it up nice and easy, okay.

Remember, outside hand on the first,

inside hand, step away, feel the resistance,

pick up your front foot.

We're going to swing it around.

- Goddammit, Eugene.

- Peak power for you, Eugene, 1,062.

- I feel like if I make a warrior grunt when I do it,

it will help.

- [Woody] Let's see. - Arrrghh!

- 761!

- Feels about right compared to our physical fitness.

- The average for pro baseball is around 2,300.

- Damn!

- No matter what this number is,

we also have to be able to apply that to a moving ball.

That could be 90 to 100 miles an hour.

You have a fraction of a second, as a hitter,

to identify if the pitch is going to be a strike,

and then we actually have to hit it.

- I think this is going to end very poorly for me.

Nothing, woah!

- I just learned that these balls can go well over

100 miles per hour with these professional pitchers.

- [Woody] Dylan Axlerod, starting pitcher with the

Cincinnati Reds.

- [Zach] Nothing that we did in the lab

tells me I'm ready for this.

- Oh, oh!

That is fast.

All right, here we go.

- [Eugene] You can hear the ball's friction in the air.

It's like the ball's screaming after it's been like spanked,

you know.

It's like, arrrggghhh!

- (mumbles) this, Zach!

- Oooohhh!

- Argh! Argh! Yeah!

- We made contact!

- We made contact with the ball!

- I think it's time to head for the cool-down party.

We'll focus on regeneration.

- What's the cool-down party?

- All right, here we go.

- What did we learn today?

- Baseball is a hard sport.

- It takes a lot of training.

- Oh my God, this is cold.

- I didn't hurt myself.

This is like a huge win for me.

- Oh my God.

Cold on my butt.

- This feels fantastic.

- America's passtime.

- People think that baseball is a slow game,

when you watch it on TV it feels slow.

Ha-haa!

- There's a lot of athleticism involved.

- Numbers and sports science.

- You have to be so fit to do it.

- It's so fast it just happened; you blink and it's done.

- Is it over? - [Voiceover] You're done.

- Thank goodness.

- It's ending!

♫ The cold never bothered me anyway ♫

- [Voiceover] Today was crazy.

Special thanks to P3 Peak Performance Project.

- [Voiceover] The Lab.

- [Voiceover] Westmont College Baseball.

- [Voiceover] And all the amazing players and coaches

who helped us out.

- [Voiceover] Until next time...

- [All] What will we try next?!

- Are we not doing that this time?

- No, no, no.

This was about baseball, not nudity.