This Week in Softball Fri, Jun 19, 2026

How fast is a slo-pitch pitch?

Mark Kelly and I were discussing the idea of a poor-man's Hawk-Eye system - something that could tell whether a pitch falls within the legal 6-to-12-foot arc. The math behind that is outside my purview, so I asked AI. I won't bore you with the whole answer, but one question I asked is, how fast, or slow, can you actually throw a softball and still land it on the strike mat?

Here's the answer: The slowest legal pitch reaches 12 feet and lands on the very front of the plate, crossing at about 27 mph and giving the batter roughly 1.65 seconds to track it.

The fastest stays flat at a 6-foot arc and hits the back of the mat at about 33 mph, leaving the batter 1.1 seconds.

For comparison, a big-league fastball reaches the plate in about 0.4 seconds - so even our hardest pitch gives a hitter nearly three times as long to watch it come in.

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Coming Up

Fri, Jun 19, 2026
9:00 AM Xtreme vs Thunder Field 1
10:30 AM Stars vs Shorebirds Field 1
10:30 AM Lightning Strikes vs Bad News Bears Field 2
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Standings

TeamWLPct
Stars 10 2 .833
Lightning Strikes 7 5 .583
Xtreme 7 5 .583
Bad News Bears 6 6 .500
Raptors 6 7 .462
Thunder 5 7 .417
Shorebirds 4 8 .333
Rebels 4 9 .308
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Stat Leaders

AVG Dave Sanders .811
Jason Johnson .800
Craig Horton .793
HR Brian Brown 16
Dave Sanders 10
Mike Cudworth 10
RBI Brian Brown 39
Mike Cudworth 35
Rich Lapat 32
OBP Craig Horton .824
Dave Sanders .805
Eric Janosov .783
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