Baseball FAQ

• Hitting — stance, load, stride, launch, connection, contact zone, extension and finish.
• Throwing, pitching and the catcher throw-down — set, load, stride, arm cocking, acceleration, release, deceleration and follow-through.
• Fielding transfer — field, transfer, set & stride and release: the glove-to-hand exchange into the throw.

Only the hitting swing has a bat to trace. In a throw, pitch or transfer the ball is in your hand, so the read follows your body alone.

One limit to know: the fault checks behind your main issue are the same for every baseball clip, and they were written for the hitting swing. On a throw, pitch or transfer a finding can therefore be worded for a swing — casting, for example — so read it as a rough note on how your hips, shoulders and arms were sequenced.

• Record at 60 fps. Bat speed blurs at 30.
• Keep both feet, hips, hands and the whole bat in frame from stance through finish.
• In a cage, film through an open panel or as close to the net as is safe — netting and bars across the body cost tracking.
• For front toss, frame the hitter, not the tosser. A second body in frame can be tracked by mistake.

Tripod, light and distance basics are the same for every sport; see recording.

From those signals it can name these hitting faults, each with a fix and the moment of the swing it came from:

• Casting — the arms fire before the hips.
• Early shoulder pull — the upper body spins out.
• Head drift — the head moves off the ball.
• Weak hip-shoulder separation at load.
• Hips not firing through the ball.
• Posture change — standing up or dipping through the swing.

Not claimed from video: measured bat speed, exit velocity, ball flight and precise barrel contact. Every fault is an estimate carrying its own confidence.

That figure scales the path to your shoulder width, so zooming in or out does not inflate it, but it is still one camera and it tends to under-read the peak. Use it to compare your own swings filmed the same way, not against a sensor reading.

The Contact read also gives a pull or opposite-field side tendency — never a direction in degrees, because true swing direction needs depth one camera cannot see.

For measured numbers, use a bat sensor or hitting tracker such as HitTrax, Blast Motion or Diamond Kinetics. You can save its numbers from a screenshot or by typing them in, as a record for your own reference — they do not feed your video analysis yet; see trackers. Reading a photo is best effort, so check every value before you save.

Film from the open side or from behind so the stride and throwing arm stay in frame through release. Only you are tracked in a pitching clip; the ball is not followed. The fault checks behind the main issue are the ones written for the hitting swing, so a finding on a delivery can be worded for a swing — read it as a note on how your body was sequenced, not a pitching-specific diagnosis.

The read is about movement, not health. It makes no medical or injury-risk claims, does not count pitches and cannot tell you whether an arm is ready to throw — pitch count limits and rest are for you and your coach to manage. Pain, soreness or a change in how the arm feels is a reason to stop and see a qualified professional, not to film another clip; see pain or injury.

The 60 fps note is advisory — the clip is still analysed — but findings that hinge on timing, such as casting or an early shoulder pull, depend on catching the right frames, and a slower clip gives them less to work with.

Look for a 60 fps or slow-motion option in your phone's camera settings; more on the setting is in what frame rate to use.

Film a position throw or a throw-down side-on from the open side, with room for the stride toward the target — arm slot and stride direction read best there. For a fielding transfer, film from the front with enough width for your range and the ground-ball lane.

The ball is not tracked and there is no clock on the play, so throw velocity, accuracy and pop time are not measured. What you get is a directional body read with the same confidence labels as a swing read. Its fault checks are the ones written for the hitting swing, so a finding can be worded for a swing — treat it as a note on sequencing rather than a throwing-specific diagnosis.