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Rounding the Bases Faster, With Math
An anonymous reader writes "The fastest route around the bases, mathematicians show, is one that perhaps no major-league ball player has ever run: It swings out a full 18.5 feet from the baseline, nearly forming a full circle. 'I would definitely experiment with it,' says former American Major League Baseball outfielder Doug Glanville, who last played with the Philadelphia Phillies. 'There's no question in my mind that runners could be more efficient.'"
Well, yeah, always obvious in hindsight, but I'm just waiting for someone to say, "If that really worked, everybody would be doing it already."
The difference between spam and poop is that you don't have to dig through septic tanks looking for real food. -- Me
1st page of the proof:
Consider a spherical runner in a frictionless vacuum.
If that really worked, everybody would be doing it already.
And indeed, baseball players typically do this: They run straight along the baseline at the beginning and then, if they think they’ve hit a double or more, they bow out to make a “banana curve. ... Carozza noticed that even when the ball heads straight for a pocket between fielders, making a double almost certain, runners almost never curve out right away.
The researcher seems to expect ball players to gamble with every such run, betting their play on what the researcher thinks is "almost certain". That means that, while trying to hit the ball, the player must know the tactics and maximum speeds of all the opponent fielders. I don't think that's going to happen.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Huh? You're trying to get to who?
The main reason why they've calculated a circular path is because of the delays that sharp turns introduce. As far as I can tell, this path makes sense if and only if you're trying to run from home to home. If you're going for a single, or a double, or a triple, you'd have different ideal path.
So even in theory, this doesn't really pan out: nobody in MLB makes it to home-plate on an outfield hit. You could probably come up with more effective routes for doubles and triples, but on the other hand, it's probably hard to tell if you've hit a triple right as you start running. If you make a hit that would be a triple, but follow a route like it's a single and then change your mind as the ball gets played, you'll probably still end up with a single or a double. If you start running for a triple on a base hit that's only really going to get you a single, it could slow you down enough to get you out. I'm more in the hedge-your-bets camp, and I'm betting that, on that basis, this isn't an effective way to go.
I don't believe in time. It's a grand conspiracy designed to sell watches.
No one cares about how fast you can round _all_ of the bases. There are only two times when it is applicable -- a home run or an in-field home run. The first makes the speed unimportant. The second really doesn't happen frequently.
The player will hit the ball, and then attempt to get to first base. If conditions look good, they will try for second base. At this point, third base will only be attempted in rare cases, mainly when an error has been made by the fielding team. The double/triple attempts are more based on information that isn't known when the player first hits the ball. As such, the action will be to take the fastest path from the current base to the next base.
So that swooping path can't be slower than the straight path or the player risks giving up a lot of singles and allowing double-plays. These are often determined by fractions when the fielding team is efficient.
Players don't run in a big circle because there is no reasonable expectation they can round all four bases. They're lucky to get one.
You get a hit, you run straight for 1st. If after arriving you can keep going, you curve over to second. Unless you belted it out of the park (and are therefore in little hurry) it's unlikely you can get further than that, but anybody going on to 3rd will make another wide curve.
In general, if a runner thinks he can clear two bases, he'll make a wide curve. Otherwise it's just a beeline for the next base.
naturally!
http://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
Where are the constraints?
You can be called out if you stray too far from the base line.
I thought that too, but wikipedia and other online sources say that this only applies when a defensive player is attempting to make a play on the runner. At that point the runner must proceed on the most direct path to the base, without deviating by more than 3ft, otherwise the runner is called out.
Online references aside, this makes a lot of sense thinking of the baseball that I've played and watched on tv.
I thought a 'home run' was something else entirely. Involving a girl. A naked girl. I didn't know running in a circle was part of the process. Or running at all, for that matter.
All I'm hearing out of you is "watching tall lanky guys", "bouncing balls", "putting it in a guy's hole", "playing with a guy's stick", and "left hand tugging a guy". It makes me think that you might be a user of Apple products.
Only once a defensive player is attempting to make a play on you.
You can be called out if you stray too far from the base line.
I cannot find anything in the rules saying that. Only thing I can find at all related is rule 7.08 (a) (1), which only applies if they move away from the base line to avoid being tagged.
AFAICT, they can run where ever they like as long as they don't interfere with the fielders.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Runners can be called out for running outside the basepath, which is 3 feet to either side of the baseline. It usually only comes up on plays where the runner is trying to avoid a tag, but that's also usually the only time anyone ever goes very far from the baseline. It's quite likely a runner would get called out well before they got 18.5 feet away from the baseline.
No, that rule explicitly only applies when they're trying to avoid a tag. it's rule 7.08 (a) (1).
http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/official_info/official_rules/runner_7.jsp
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
none of the researchers or verifiers actually got off their ass and ran bases to test
Exactly. He takes visual queues from the opposition players and coaches. Do I keep going, or do I stop. The decision for all four bases can't be made as soon as he contacts the ball. He hits it, he runs for 1st. Is it safe to go for second? Continue on, but that decision is made at or near 1st base.
The only time a decision like that can be made is if he hits a home run, over the wall. Then speed isn't of the essence, he could walk it if he so desired.
Optimal speed lines are used in race car driving though. Generally you come into the turn on the outside, go towards the apex, and drift out to the outside again. Obvious exceptions apply. Is there another car in the way? What is the next turn after this one? Driving on a street-type course, there was a set of four turns in a snake pattern. Instead of taking each turn properly, I lined up with the center of the overall pattern. It left a little bumping as I nudged the curbs (slight angles, not hard curbs like a neighborhood street would have). Instead of doing 60mph through there, I could do over 90. Anyone behind me, even if they were in an equally powered car, would be far behind me by the time I left that part of the course.
Lots of planning goes into automobile racing, since I'm not waiting to see if the ball I hit is coming in from the outfield. My only concerns were the maximum speed I could take turns with no choices (like above), and other cars on the track. I can't do 90 through that pattern if there's a car doing 60 through it ahead of me, weaving through the whole thing "properly". With that in mind, I would try to be the first car of a group through it, just so I didn't have to slow down. In professional racing, all the drivers would have already known the best way through, so part of that would be eliminated, unless it was a car about to be lapped. In those cases, he'd be flagged over to allow the faster cars through, but you don't always get that luxury on street-track type courses.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
LOL troll.
Nah, you have a good point. Baseball was the only sport to require an organist to fill in the boring parts.
Modern baseball games are even worse. Even live, only a fifth of the game is actual baseball. The rest is filler provided by the jumbotrons and sound systems. The only redeeming qualities of going to meatspace MLB games are getting really drunk and laughing inside about how our kids don't fully understand the meaning of the popular song Hey-oh that's being played every 5 seconds over the PA.
This whole scenario assumes the ball is still in the outfield, so no one can attempt to tag you out.
The most rabid believers in American Exceptionalism are the exact same people whose policies are destroying it.
"At first you might think that a very slow, awkward runner should just walk directly from base to base, except that he'd likely fall down trying to make the sharp turn at first.."
I would like to point something out.
Making a 90 degree turn is physically impossible without coming to a complete stop. If a person immediately applies a force orthogonal to their current velocity, it would not result in a 90 degree turn in the path (but it would probably cause them to fall down). The only way to make a 90 degree turn is to come to a complete stop, then turn, then accelerate in the new direction. There would be no reason for the runner to fall down under these circumstances.
Because our muscles exert a finite amount of force, and force is the time rate of change of momentum, and momentum is mass times velocity, the time required to come to a stop must be proportional to the velocity of the runner.
This confirms the obvious fact that for a walker, the time that it takes to go from walking speed to a full stop is a fraction of a second, and hence there is no measurable time wasted in making a 90 degree turn, and no reason to walk anything other than the shortest path if you are walking.
We know that the optimal path for a faster runner involves some overshooting, and this proves that there is a continuum of optimal paths that is dependent on velocity. It is also clear from Newton's first law, as I showed above, that running faster befits reducing curvature of the path. This applies to any velocity. Thus, in the limit as velocity goes to infinity, curvature becomes ever increasingly important, and hence in the limit the optimal path must be a circle.
And just to be clear, the base line isn't the dirt path between the bases with the line painted on it forming the diamond shape. The base line in this rule is a line from the runners current position to the base when the defensive players are attempting to tag the runner out with the ball.
No, Who is on first, What is on second. I Don't Know is on third. FFS what do they TEACH you kids these days?
Now get off my lawn!
It is thus obvious that this rule should be repealed, and, furthermore, "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" should be replaced in all occurrences with "Yakety Sax".
Exactly. He takes visual queues from the opposition players and coaches. Do I keep going, or do I stop. The decision for all four bases can't be made as soon as he contacts the ball. He hits it, he runs for 1st. Is it safe to go for second? Continue on, but that decision is made at or near 1st base.
Why does everyone keep repeating this? It's not true. I'm not a major league player, but after watching a good number of games, I assure you that I, most fans, and every major league player knows, very likely, what base they will reach when it becomes apparent where the ball will land. Sorry to repeat myself:
* Over the centerfielder's head: Triple
* Reaches the wall elsewhere: Double
* Doesn't make it past the outfielders: Single
If the defense tries to make a play on another runner, you might take an extra base, and there are a few other variables, but the above is pretty reliable. Think how many times a major leaguer has hit a ball: It's not like they have no idea what is going to happen, or that they won't make it past first when they hit it a line drive off the wall in left-center.
Surely an example of circular reasoning...
Incorrect. As long as you're not "making a mockery of the game" (I believe that's the term, but it may be something roughly equivalent), until a defensive player attempts to make a tag, you are free to run absolutely anywhere you like. Once the tag is attempted, you are restricted to remain within 3 feet of the line connecting your current position to the next (or previous) base. This running strategy would quite easily be allowed within the rules.
This is pretty funny. If we were talking about Halo, we wouldn't see so many naive claims and theories, and so many of them moderated up! Instead of replying to each one, let me clarify a few points:
A major league batter knows the base he'll likely reach as soon as he knows where the ball will land. Having seen many thousands of hits, he can make a pretty good judgement pretty quickly. I've merely watched the games, and I can tell you well before the ball lands. It's all done without any math or calculations, if you can believe it, just rules of thumb based on experience:
* Over the center-fielder's head is a triple
* Reaching the wall elsewhere: a double
* Doesn't get by the outfielders: a single.
There are variables from that 'baseline': The defense could make a play on another baserunner, giving the batter the chance to get another base. Fielding mistakes, and sometimes a hard hit, a very fast/slow runner, or a very good/bad arm can make a difference of a base, but it's rare.
For the other question, I really don't know for sure. Baserunners are regularly outside the baselines, but I've rarely seen a baserunner go that far out unless he was avoiding a tag, taking out a fielder in a double-play, or over-running first base. But they sometimes round bases pretty widely without being called out. The rules are more complicated than they appear and the umps have discretion. I don't know for sure, but I doubt they'd be called out unless they were avoiding a tag or interfering with a fielder. I wouldn't depend on an answer that didn't come from an umpire.
I'm just a long-time avid baseball fan. I'm surprised I don't see more on /.; baseball depends heavily on a very controlled environment (batter vs pitcher) and is accessible to extensive statistical analysis. For those interested, I recommend Baseball Prospectus, Baseball Think Factory, the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR), and the writings of Bill James, the great modern popularizer of the statistical analysis of baseball (I think of him as the Bruce Schneier of baseball -- very insightful, clear analysis). Now, back to your regularly scheduled News for Nerds ...
* Reaches the wall elsewhere: Double
Not in Fenway Park. If it bounces hard off the Green Monster then it's a single. Hard line drives that are home runs in other parks are singles at Fenway.
Rule 7.10(a):
"Any runner shall be called out, on appeal, when --
(a) After a fly ball is caught, he fails to retouch his original base before he or his original base is tagged;
Rule 7.10(a) Comment: "Retouch," in this rule, means to tag up and start from a contact with the base after the ball is caught. A runner is not permitted to take a flying start from a position in back of his base."
In case you're curious about the relevance of comments, there is this note in the Official Rules Foreword:
"The Playing Rules Committee, at its December 1977 meeting, voted to incorporate the Notes/Case Book/Comments section directly into the Official Baseball Rules at the appropriate places. Basically, the Case Book interprets or elaborates on the basic rules and in essence have the same effect as rules when applied to particular sections for which they are intended."
One fifth is still better than the NFL, which I believe hovers around one eighth. That's half of the reason I watch hockey - play is always moving when the clock is running. Even when the clock isn't running, stoppages rarely take more than 30 seconds.
There is something to what you say. However, what an experienced batter won't know is how the fielder will choose to play the ball. That means that the batter doesn't know if it will be over the fielder's head or not. Additionally, that knowledge of where the ball will land is really only true in his home park. Over the course of this past baseball season, I saw several occasions where a home team batter got an extra base because of where the ball landed that on another night a visiting team batter did not. The reason for this was that the home team batter knew that the ball hit to that spot would take a tricky bounce while the visiting team batter did not. This was compounded by the fact that the home team fielder also knew that the ball would take a tricky bounce and the visiting team fielder did not (I only noticed this particular occurrence because the announcers pointed it out, but in future games after that I noticed that the home team fielders consistently fielded balls hit to that area better than visiting team fielders).
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Not to mention "hits the wall near Pesky's Pole and before the fielder can react it's scuttled like a rat all the way to the bullpen." Inside-the-park home run in that case if you're a decent runner.
Save Maine's economy: write stuff down. All comments are exclusively my own, not my employer.