野球の打撃におけるインパクト時のバットの上下方向の傾斜が打球の回転に及ぼす影響

抄録

In baseball, the flight distance of batted balls is influenced by not only the batted ball velocity but also the spin. Previous studies reported that balls batted toward the opposite field (right field for the right-handed batter) had greater side spin and curved horizontally. If batters could impart less side spin to the ball, flight distance would be expected to increase because the ball would travel more linearly. The purpose of this study was to investigate how the spin of a batted ball is affected by the vertical bat angle at impact. A pitching machine was used to launch balls toward a fixed bat. The bat was positioned at six different angles under two conditions; the bat's long axis was adjusted horizontally and the bat head was declined 40° lower than the bat grip. The batted ball spins resulting from the batted ball angles were compared between the conditions. There were significant correlations between the horizontal batted ball angle and the side spin of the batted balls in both conditions. There was no significant difference between the slopes of the regression lines for the conditions. In brief, balls batted toward the same direction had similar spin regardless of the conditions. Therefore, it is suggested that the batters should not attempt to control batted ball spin, and increasing their bat swing speed would be still the most important key factor to hit balls long distances toward the various directions.