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Monday, September 28, 2009
Optimal running path
The academicians are giving us this:
A couple of points which seemed confusing (to me) when I read the blog post:
- Frank Morgan, the blogger, writes in the third person
- the first study mentioned (22.2 seconds) is specifically about “station-to-station” ball, where you do not overrun the base, and follow the baseline in a straight line, starting/stopping at each base
- the circular-type of optimal paths presumes you are going for an inside-the-parker from the outset
- it’s hard to tell what the maximum velocity is attained in each leg (base-to-base), and how much slowing down occurs (if any), as the runner steps (or sets himself to step) on the base
Anyway, I’m looking forward to reading the full study, as my interest is piqued.
When we talked about hustling a few months ago, I guessed:
I will guess a fast player would have an inside the parker in 13 seconds. I reason 3.1-3.2 for each base, plus an extra 0.5 or so “startup”.
Another way to calculate is to imagine he’s running in a circle with diameter=127 feet. That gives us a circumference of 400 feet, or 122m. Olympic runners do 100m in 10 sec, and the other 22m would take 2 sec, for 12 sec. So, it seems reasonable that very fast, but non-Olympic runners, with not ideal track conditions will take it in 13 sec.
I will guess that a slow runner (by MLB standards) would run around the bases in 18 seconds? Pure guess here.
The Guiness record according to the blogger is 13.3 seconds (set 70 years ago, which tells me no one is seriously making a run at this record, for whatever reason). All to say that the sanity-check model (my model) sorta supports the numbers we see.
Glove-slap to Neyer.