Baseball Pitching Machine: Iron Mike to ABB Arms

How the baseball pitching machine grew from Hinton's 1897 gun and Iron Mike to JUGS wheels and Trajekt Arc, and where robot arms and ABB robots could fit.

INDUSTRIAL ROBOTICS

Chat With Robot

10/8/20265 min read

The baseball pitching machine has been around for more than a century, and it keeps getting closer to a real pitcher. This post follows it from a gunpowder cannon at Princeton and the arm-style Iron Mike to spinning wheel machines and the Trajekt Arc, which now plays video of an opposing pitcher and throws his pitches in big league cages. It also looks at research arms that throw, catch and bat, and where ABB robots such as the IRB 120 and IRB 1300 could fit. That last part is a possibility; no ABB pitching robot exists today.

Dark silhouette of a pitching machine in front of a netted batting cage under green lights

A pitching machine faces the batter's box at a batting center in Japan. Photo: Yoshihiro Kudo / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)

How hitters practised before the pitching machine got smart

For most of baseball's history, batting practice meant a coach or a spare pitcher lobbing balls over the plate. In 1897 Charles Hinton, a mathematics instructor at Princeton, built a gunpowder pitching gun for the university team. It could vary speed and even throw curves, but it also caused several injuries and may have contributed to his dismissal. In 1916 Bartley N. Marty patented one-wheel and two-wheel pitching machines, the basic layout many machines still use.

Old black and white photo of baseball players in uniform around a wire batting cage on a dirt field

New York Giants players stand around a batting cage in 1923. Photo: Bain News Service / Library of Congress via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

The arm-style machine came from Kansas. In 1952 Paul Giovagnoli, who ran golf driving ranges in Wichita and Topeka, built an arm-type machine for his range and founded Master Pitching Machine. Its long metal arm swings on a big gear and throws the ball overhand at the same speed and spot every time. It became known as Iron Mike. His son Joe has said the best guess is that it was named after a batting practice pitcher whose arm never tired, but no one is sure.

Rusty pitching machine with a long metal arm and a big gear wheel in a museum room

An old arm-style pitching machine with a large gear at the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame in St. Marys, Ontario. Photo: Robert Taylor / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

Wheel machines took over when hitters wanted breaking balls. John Paulson started JUGS by building a pitching machine to help his two sons hit, and the company's first product was a curveball machine. Spinning wheels grip the ball and send it out with backspin or sidespin, and JUGS says its machines can throw more than 600 pitches an hour. Wheel machines ended up on youth fields, college campuses and pro cages, though a hitter still saw a chute, with no windup and no arm slot to read.

Old green pitching machine with two wheels behind a metal grid in a museum display

The first Japanese-made pitching machine, built in 1958 and used by the Chunichi Dragons, on display. Photo: Bject / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Where pitching machines and robots stand today

Trajekt Sports, based in suburban Toronto, added the pitcher back. Its Trajekt Arc is about 6 feet wide and 4 feet deep and sits on a track, so it can slide to match where a pitcher stands on the rubber. A screen plays video of the pitcher's windup, and the ball comes out of a hole set to his arm slot. Teams feed in data from Hawk-Eye, Rapsodo or TrackMan so the machine copies the speed, spin and shape of each pitch, including the gyro spin that makes some sliders drop. It throws lighter foam-core balls, and Trajekt worked with Rawlings on a ball with a softer core, so hitters see real seam movement without stinging hands or broken bats.

Dodgers pitcher in a white uniform striding off the mound after releasing a pitch

Kenley Jansen pitches for the Los Angeles Dodgers at Dodger Stadium. Photo: Ken Lund / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)

On 30 August 2026, MLB.com reported that nearly every MLB organization uses Trajekt, that the average team owns three Arc machines and that usage has doubled every year since 2022. The Cubs were first, at spring training in 2021, and in 2024 MLB approved in-game use after Trajekt added an offline mode. On 19 September the New York Times reported that Shohei Ohtani hit off a Trajekt machine as he neared his return from the injured list. The league-wide batting line has barely moved since 2021, and the 1,500-pound machine cannot travel with a team.

Baseball player in a red Angels uniform and helmet holding a bat up while waiting to hit

Shohei Ohtani at bat for the Los Angeles Angels against the Orioles in 2022. Photo: Mogami Kariya / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Researchers are also building arms that throw. The Robotics and AI Institute's AthenaZero, a low-inertia two-armed robot, threw a ball at about 70 mph and made contact on 82 percent of 33 swings in tests reported in September 2026. It also caught balls arriving at up to 41 mph over 7.3 metres, which needs fast tracking as much as fast motors. ABB arms have been used in ball sports before: Google built its GoalsEye table tennis player on an ABB IRB 120, which we covered in our table tennis robot post. ABB does not make a pitching robot, but a fast compact arm like the IRB 1300 could test balls and bats or throw from a set release point.

Small orange ABB IRB 120 robot arm on a table with students working at it

Students program an ABB IRB 120, the robot family Google used for its GoalsEye table tennis player. Photo: Peterantala / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

What comes next for robot pitching

The release is still the weak spot. As the MLB.com report puts it, a ball looks different coming out of a hole in a screen than out of a human hand. An arm that copies a pitcher's release would have to reach big league speed: MLB pitchers set another fastball velocity record in 2026, averaging 94.8 mph. AthenaZero's 70 mph is closer to a high school pitcher, so a robot that throws a big league fastball from a real arm motion is still years away.

White ABB IRB 1300 robot arm marked Foundry Plus 2 working inside a glass walled cell

An ABB IRB 1300 with Foundry Plus 2 protection, built to handle water and dust. Photo: ABB

For homes and youth teams, price will probably decide what shows up first. In October 2026 the Times of India profiled Andrew Sun-Zhuang, a Washington baseball player who built an AI pitching machine for about $260. Low-cost machines with cameras and apps that track strikes are likely to spread faster than full robot arms, which need guarding and a trained operator. Safety matters more as speed rises: Hinton's gun injured players in 1897, and any fast arm near a batter needs zones and stop limits.

Boy in a cap holding a ball next to a single wheel pitching machine on a baseball field

A boy loads a wheel-type pitching machine at a youth baseball field. Photo: jgodfrey / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

For factories and labs, industrial arms already fit testing work. A bat or ball maker could use an ABB robot to swing, throw or impact equipment the same way thousands of times, and such cells are planned and checked in RobotStudio before they run. Trajekt reports that around 10 NCAA programs are expected to have a machine by the end of October 2026. If prices fall, college and academy hitters may soon train against data-driven pitches as routinely as big leaguers do today.

Woman holding an ABB FlexPendant beside a white IRB 1300 robot arm in a workshop

An ABB IRB 1300 small industrial robot with an operator holding the FlexPendant. Photo: ABB

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