It is easy to see from his gaudy numbers that Prince Fielder is one of baseball’s best hitters. However, so much goes into being so good. The work that players like Fielder put in to their craft is staggering, not to mention the incredible amount of talent that goes into playing professional baseball. Sometimes, little things catch the eye that prove just how good some of the ball players are and just how fine-tuned and mechanical they can be.
Take as an example these two photos I took at a March 17 Spring Training game between the Tigers and the Nationals. In the first picture, Fielder is getting ready to take a pitch for ball 1. In the second picture, Fielder is about to line the pitch to centerfield for an RBI single:
Prince Fielder is about to take this pitch. (Not Swing)
In this next picture, Fielder does swing.
Fielder swings and lines the pitch to center.
The story being told here is a little bit nuanced. Basically, at this point in each picture, Prince has a tiny fraction of second before the ball reaches him. You would expect that his body would look completely different on a pitch where he swings and a pitch where he doesn’t at this point. However, that’s not the case. Fielder is so fast that he can wait until a ball moving at more than 90mph is about 30 feet away before he starts his swing. It’s impressive that he even got the bat to ball, let alone made solid contact and lined a shot to center.
-Max Frankel
