Post#11 » by Schad » Sat Jun 1, 2013 5:11 pm
It's comparable in complexity, rather than the actual motion. The release of a basketball is a relatively smooth motion; you jump, and as you jump you bring the ball up, shooting optimally at your highest point, with (as best possible) everything squared to the target. It's also relatively low effort/impact, and the ball is fairly large, and thus relatively easy to control with your shooting arm/guide hand. The only movement that needs to be imparted is consistent backspin. For these reasons, even a bad miss in basketball is generally going to be around a foot from the intended target.
With a baseball, you have a not-completely-round object thanks to the seams, gripped in the fingers, and a complex delivery that involves synchronizing parts that are moving in multiple directions, released at a point well off-center of the body (enough that it's generally out of your field of view). You're also throwing hard enough to be at the physiological limit, which makes mistakes more likely and magnifies their results, and you're doing it while throwing on a downward plane off a hill. Moreover, you don't use the same delivery every time; most starters use both a wind-up and a stretch delivery depending on the situation, and some even have two variants out of the stretch. Then, you have a slightly different motion for all of your pitches, each of which is also held differently and usually require varying pressure/the 'finish' with the wrist, meaning that starting pitchers naturally end up with between 8-12 discrete throwing mechanics, all of which need to be synchronized pretty close to perfection while accelerating a ball to highway speeds.
In terms of complexity, it definitely trumps shooting a basketball.

**** your asterisk.