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Saturday, July 25, 2009
How a humidor affects baseballs at Coors Field
Another great story from MSM:
The baseballs are slightly larger, by about a percent and a half, Bohn said. That actually helps the ball go farther.
“One way to think about that is to say the humidified balls are slightly more dense and a more dense ball, all things being equal, will travel through the air better,” Bohn said. “Think of a Wiffle ball compared to a baseball. A baseball is more dense. You can throw that a lot farther.”
The extra density adds just a couple of feet to the distance a ball will travel.
The bigger effect on baseballs is on the coefficient of restitution, which is the bounciness of the ball. Bohn said this effect was first studied by David Kagan, a physics professor at California State University, Chico.
“The humidified balls are more spongy, less bouncy, so they go slower off the bat when you hit them,” Bohn said.
“Because of that, the humidified balls would travel about 6 feet less on a well-hit home run ball, just because they come slower off the bat.”
The net result is that balls will travel about 4 feet less on a 400-foot home run.
...
Another result is that the baseballs at Coors Field are easier to grip. That’s something Bohn hasn’t studied yet, but he’s heard it from the people who care about it most.
“The pitchers have absolutely considered that,” Bohn said. “They complained bitterly in the old days. ‘These balls are like cue balls,’ they complained, and now that complaint has gone away.”
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