this post was submitted on 10 Jun 2026
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[–] ilinamorato@lemmy.world 11 points 2 days ago (1 children)

If you mean just a run, then sure, you just need to be a phenomenally fast runner or have infielders who can't grip the ball. But I think you mean a home run that goes out of the park.

For all intents and purposes, a bunt is just a bounce. That means that it will always leave the bat moving slower than it was being pitched; even with ideal materials and no air resistance, the best a bunt can do is bounce the ball as fast as the pitch. So the first question is, could a sufficiently fast fastball go over the wall?

A professional baseball player can throw a baseball about 100 meters, which also happens to be about the same distance from the batter to the outfield wall on most fields; so just on the face of it the answer is "no," because even in an ideal scenario it's already traveled 18 meters from the pitcher's mound to the plate before it starts moving toward the wall, meaning that an ideal pitch of a perfect ball bouncing as efficiently as possible off a perfectly-bouncy bat would fall 18 meters short of the wall at best.

So what would it take to make this work?

Well, let's consider location. For an out-of-the-park homer, pure distance isn't enough; we don't just want to hit the wall, we want the ball to go over it. Assuming MLB stadiums, you might think our best bet is to send it over the right field wall in Fenway Park in Boston, which is only a meter tall; but the Pesky Pole that's 92 meters away is 4 meters and it doesn't come down until it's 115 meters from the plate. So we should go for Yankee Stadium, which has a 2-meter wall in the right field at 96 meters.

And obviously we're going to need an amazing pitcher here, which we'll talk about in a minute, but the batter is actually important too. Specifically his height; we need him to be as tall as possible, so that the top of his strike zone is as close to the height of the wall as we can get (or taller, if we can manage). Plus, he needs to be a southpaw, as a right-handed batter would have to contend with the taller left field wall. He'll also have to focus on hitting the ball at an ideal angle (30°) and imparting whatever backspin he can to give it a little bit of aerodynamic lift.

What we need from a pitcher is just speed (and I guess a tendency to pitch to the very top of the strike zone). The ball is going to lose a good deal of speed in the bunt, so it needs way more coming off the mound. In a normal hit, the batter puts a ton of energy into the ball, but in our bunt, it's all up to the physics. The bat-ball coefficient of restitution in the MLB is usually around 0.5, so the best we can realistically hope for is that it's going to lose about half of its speed to heat, sound, and vibration. It'll actually lose even more to the fact that the BBCoR is measured against a perfectly stationary bat (so even the most sturdy human bunting would decrease that number as their muscles and bones absorbed the impact), but the batter could try to push the bat and give it a little bit more power at that point, which could compensate for that loss. We'll call that part a wash.

But here we are into a realm where we can start putting some actual speed numbers on stuff. The slowest speed-off-the-bat of an over-the-wall home run is about 42 meters per second, and since we're effectively not going to get any help from the batter, x/2 has to equal 42. So the pitcher needs to be able to throw at 84 meters per second, which is a 188mph fastball; interestingly, that's exactly double the average MLB fastball speed (94mph), and about 178% of the speed of the fastest fastball ever recorded. (Actually it'd need to be 89 m/s to account for the speed it would lose to drag from the pitcher's mound to the plate, but at that point we're just being pedantic.)

Unfortunately, unlike human running speed, the fastest a human can throw a fastball seems to be pretty much optimized, and in fact biomechanical models suggest that any human throwing faster than about 108mph would probably tear the ligament in their elbow from the torque. A 188mph fastball thrown by a human would certainly be career-ending and maybe even dismembering. So not only do we need a superhuman baseball pitcher, we also need them to be willing to throw their entire pro baseball livelihood away on our stunt. And we only get one shot at it.

So let's talk through this crazy situation, second-by-second (with apologies to Randall Munroe). I'll treat the moment of the bunt as T0.

T - 10.00s: The most powerful pitcher in all of human history stands atop the pitching mound at Yankee Stadium. The catcher gives him the sign, which in this case I can only assume would be showing him a picture of the pitcher's family, whom he's kidnapped and threatened in order to get the pitcher to do this.

T - 5.00s: The pitcher sheds a tear and nods. The catcher probably moves out of the way, knowing as he does what's about to happen.

T - 1.75s: The pitcher winds up for the pitch. The batter begins to move the bat into position for the bunt, right at the top of his strike zone; he has to do it now, even though the pitcher will see it, or else it won't be in position in time. Any other pitcher would switch up his throw, seeing this, but the catcher has his kids, man.

T - 0.25s: Our ball leaves the pitcher's mound, traveling at 89 meters per second about a meter off the ground, at about a 10° downward angle with significant backspin. Close behind it is the pitcher's lower right arm, severed at the elbow from the rotational torque severing the UCL, muscles, and skin. Luckily the pitcher managed to release the pitch at the optimal angle before he threw his arm.

T - 0.125s: Our ball is halfway to the plate, and it's now 0.9 meters above the ground.

T + 0: Our ball reaches the bat traveling 84 m/s, right at the top of the batter's strike zone, and compresses both itself and the bat before rebounding at 42 m/s at a 30° angle toward the right wall of the outfield. A very loud crack is made from the contact. The leather cover of the ball is torn during the impact, and it's very possible that it could've exploded entirely into a tangle of yarn and cork. Good thing for us it didn't.

T + 0.05s: The crack of the bat reaches the pitcher's mound, though the pitcher is a little bit preoccupied to think about it right now.

T + 0.20s: The pitcher's right forearm hits the ground, a few meters in front of him, having reached its terminal velocity much sooner than the ball did.

T + 0.25s: The batter drops his bat and begins to run toward first base.

T + 0.30s: A very loud crack of the bat reaches the outfield wall.

T + 0.48s: If the ball were bunted straight down the middle, it'd probably hit the pitcher in the head, as it's only about a meter and a half off the ground. But he's probably suffered enough, and we're aiming to the right anyway.

T + 0.53s: The bat dropped by the batter hits the ground.

T + 1.21s: The ball is halfway to the outfield wall, and it's reached the apex of its trajectory, about ten meters off the ground. It's also slowed down to 32 m/s.

T + 2.42s: The ball just barely clears the outfield wall (it's a good thing the right fielder was so concerned about the pitcher pitching his arm off that he decided to run in to help the pitcher rather than running after the ball, or he could've easily caught it).

T + 3.00s: The pitcher has lost about 32ml of blood (not counting what was in his arm) and while the blood loss isn't critical yet, he's certainly going into psychogenic shock.

T + 4.50s: The runner makes it to first base.

From that point on, I suppose you could probably guess pretty easily as to what happens. The runner rounds the rest of the bases, but nobody really pays attention to him anymore. Medics swarm the pitcher's mound. The catcher tries to sneak away, but is caught by stadium security and later arrested for kidnapping and reckless endangerment. The pitcher's family is rescued as the pitcher himself is taken to the hospital for emergency arm-reattachment surgery. The batter is questioned extensively about his involvement in the scheme. The pitcher becomes famous for accomplishing a feat that no one can ever repeat.

[–] milkisklim@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago (2 children)

I thoroughly enjoyed your answer and since I am too lazy to do the math myself hope you are correct.

[–] ilinamorato@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago

I also hope that I am correct, but I'm glad at least that it was entertaining.

[–] bitchkat@lemmy.world -1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I got bored the instance he dismissed an inside the park home run since its clearly the only way you are going to bunt a home run. He should have described how that could happen without an error since an error is not a home run.

You would need something like a really slow roller that the infielders are waiting to roll out of bounds.

[–] ilinamorato@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago

But you got un-bored at T + 0.20s, right?

In all reality, I find physics and writing far more interesting than I do the arcana of MLB rules. Different kinds of neurodivergent, I guess.