What kind of chest protector...

[DG]

I don't know so someone tell me. At what point does a radar gun measure the speed, when it leaves the pitchers hand, or when it arrives at the plate, or just some average in between?

Difference between 60.5' and 46' would, I think, be miniscule.

It is all fairly irrelevant, because it appears the ump was hit in the neck ultimately.

[Kevin Finnerty]

I worked the gun for several summers of scout ball, and I worked the gun for a handful of D-I games this year. So I've gunned about 200 college pitchers and college prospect pitchers who threw as high as 98 m.p.h., and generally lived in the high 80s/low 90s.

When you aim it from a low angle, you get your reading near his release point. But when you aim it from a high angle, you can put it where you want it. When a guy who throws 90 m.p.h. lets it fly, it's going 90 out of his hand and for the first few feet. But at the 30 ft. mark, you can register an 87 or 88 on the same pitch that the guy next to you registers a 90 out of his hand. At a point approximately eight or 10 feet in front of the plate, it's 85 or 86. So, that would mean a 90-m.p.h. fastball is traveling at about 84 or 85 when it reaches the plate.

A two-seam fastball breaks down faster. I clocked a guy this year who throws a two-seam hard sinker that clocks at 91 and 92 consistently. It's going 83 or 84 when it reaches the area in front of the plate.

So, based on those experiences, a high-velocity fastball slows down on average about one m.p.h. every 10 feet, but it's obviously slowing down more in the last 30 than the first 30.

The gun measures it as it breaks through the beam, and it is solely dependent on where it's pointed.

Also, there are occasions when you aim it too close to the hitting zone and you register the bat. A college level stud swings a bat 110 m.p.h. or more on their best cuts.

[greymule]

Remember also that the gun has to be straight on. If it's hitting the pitch at an angle, it will register lower. You have to divide your reading by the cosine of the angle to get the true speed. If you're 10 degrees off on a 90 mph pitch, the true speed is actually 91.4; at 20 degrees off 90 = 95.78. If the gun is 90 degrees off, all pitches register 0. A chip can be programmed to do practically anything, so maybe some guns are designed to take the angle into account.

At the Iowa State Fair 25 years ago (when I still had an arm), I threw as hard as I could at a booth where a guy was holding a radar gun. I kept registering 63 and told the guy that was impossible—63 is the speed of a throw from the catcher to the pitcher.

All this guy could say was, "That's the reading." However, when I asked him the highest reading he had clocked that day, he said it was 64, by two Iowa State University pitchers. (I doubt that their coach would have approved.) So I assumed his gun was faulty until I learned that the angle was critical. The guy manning the booth was sitting in a deck chair well off to the side.

[Kevin Finnerty]

We're always behind the plate. And sometimes it's right on the field, if it's a scrimmage of some sort.