Physicist shows how steroids can fuel home runs — with some fairly simple math:
Calculations show that, by putting on 10 percent more muscle mass, a batter can swing about 5 percent faster, increasing the ball’s speed by 4 percent as it leaves the bat.Depending on the ball’s trajectory, this added speed could take it into home run territory 50 percent more often, said Roger Tobin of Tufts University in Boston.
“A 4 percent increase in ball speed, which can reasonably be expected from steroid use, can increase home run production by anywhere from 50 percent to 100 percent,” said Tobin, whose study will be published in an upcoming issue of the American Journal of Physics.
You don’t have to increase your average hitting distance much to double the tiny fraction of your hits that go over the wall.