I was asked by Dr. Walker to work with him in some

baseball-related research.

What drove me to this field was my love and passion

for baseball, so it was quite an opportunity to get to

complete a thesis on or in the field of baseball.

From a practical perspective, we're interested in determining

what separates a novice hitter, in this case a high school

batter, from a more experienced batter, a division one player,

in identifying early parts of a baseball pitch.

So the common phrase you hear is, keep your eye on the ball.

What research has actually told us is that hitters

aren't able to keep their eye on the ball.

You can only track a baseball to about 5 1/2 feet out in

front of you, so that's one limitation.

But additionally, research has shown us that experts are

better able to identify key aspects of a pitch early on.

In the current study, we look to further what previous research

had done in examining pitch recognition in

a simulated batting setting.

Batters were presented with images on a video screen,

pitches from varying arm angles or hand slots, and they were

asked to differentiate between pitch types.

The first was you could see the hand behind us.

We flashed that hand with a baseball in it to the batters

for approximately 1/60 of a second, and they had to identify

whether the pitch was a fastball, a curveball,

a slider, or a change-up.

We were looking to see if there are differences between

the high school players and the college players.

We then flashed an entire pitcher with the ball in the

hand and they had to identify what type of pitch it was.

And basically with that scenario, we're forcing hitters

to then search for the baseball.

And based on that previous research, the better the

hitter, the more experienced the hitter, the better able

they are to identify where the baseball would be.

And then third, we actually put them through

a practical simulation.

They saw a pitcher delivering a pitch.

The ball was released five frames out of the hand which

simulates the decision-making process of hitting within

the first 10, 14 feet, you have to make a decision on the

type of pitch before you can then hit the pitch.

The screen was then occluded, gone black, and based on that

information they had to identify the pitch with that

limited amount of information.

Our results did agree with our hypothesis in all

scenarios and all trials.

The college hitter was more successful at identifying or

predicting pitch types, and this is supported based on previous

research in that we do know or assume the college hitter to be

better at finding other cues, looking at things like where

the arm motion is coming from or honing in on where

the release point is when the ball is actually leaving

the hand of the pitcher.

We just submitted the research to the Association for Applied

Sports Psychology, the annual conference will be held in

Providence, Rhode Island, this October, and then

additionally we're going to submit this for publication in

the "Journal of Applied Sports Psychology".

One of my career goals initially is to teach at

the elementary or high school level in public schools and

coach softball or baseball.

Just in the small amount of time I worked with Dr. Walker

and had a better understanding of the game, I feel like

as a coach I will be able to present different areas or

elements that I didn't have previously because I didn't

play college baseball.

It's been a real learning experience in terms of what

hitters do and then, from a pitching standpoint, thinking

outside the box of what is that batter trying to ascertain,

trying to determine, based on what you're doing.

So I think there's some real practical applications for

practitioners, coaches, in addition to the research side

of things, how we actually apply this information.