from Amazon
Thursday, April 01, 2010
Optimal launch angle of bat, by park
This is from Greg.
It shows the minimum Speed off Bat required for a particular elevation angle in order to get a fly ball over the Green Monster in Fenway Park (at a point where the wall is 342 feet from home plate, roughly between straight-away left field and left-center field). On the plot, any ball above the curve is a homer, anything below it is a non-homer.
Re-read Greg’s description 2 or 3 times and then look at the image again. (Image is also clickable if you want to see it bigger.) This is how I responded at first glance:
Whoah, this is really cool.
So, we can even say that there is an “optimal” launch angle for each park, based on speed off the bat, and spray angle.
If you have a RHH pull power hitter (average spray angle of say -20 degrees) who hits fastballs at 100mph off the bat, then his optimal launch angle at Fenway might be 30 degrees, while in other parks it could be 27 degrees. And if he’s a weaker hitter, he might maximize his talent by launching at Fenway at 21 degrees, while he might launch at 23 degrees in other parks.
Yowza.
I’d be interested to see a third plot on that graph—the plot above/below which the ball will hit, say, 10 feet above the ground (fieldable on the fly) on the wall. A good chunk of those line drives Fenway ‘takes away’ guarantee the batter a hit, which would be caught in another park.