Baseball Pitching Accuracy

Question
Hi, I am a graduate student and for my thesis I am studying the effects of a proper warm-up on pitching accuracy and velocity, both before a game and in-between innings. So for my data collection I need to quantify velocity and accuracy. Velocity I will simply be measuring with a radar gun, but I am struggling to come up with a good approach to measuring/quantifying accuracy and figured I would ask if anybody might be able to suggest one. Thanks.

Answer
Ian,

If this is a controlled experiment, I'd suggest marking the ball with a dye, powder, or paint and have the pitcher throw at a target of some kind.  The ball will leave a mark where it strikes the target and you can measure the distance from the aiming point.  Or, to avoid marking the ball, you can mark the target and see where the ball strikes and measure based on that.

Make sure the pitcher always aims at the same spot and do the experiments several different days and times with different pitchers in order to statistically get a reasonable sample.

Hope this helps!

Brian