You're equating 'I noticed a thing happened so I repeated it' with 'I predicted something would happen and it worked every time.' It's the difference between memorizing answers to a test vs understanding how to create the answers. It looks the same if you only observe the end result, but the process is entirely different.
And yeah, knowing the science behind the forces involved does help a pitcher. Not as much as practice and muscles obviously, but proper throwing technique, diet, and specific exercises are important. So is understanding how to avoid injuries. He may not need to know particle physics, but he certainly needs to be taught many things that he'd never understand through simple practice or experimentation. Things that, for example, a doctor or engineer would be able to figure out through pre existing knowledge that a lawyer would not.
This seems like a fairly simple concept to me. 'What have I got in my pockets?' is not a fair riddle, regardless of the fact that you can figure out the answer after enough guesses and the ability to rule out things too big to fit. In the same way, 'when will this attack hit?' is not a fair gameplay element when the attack has no flow to it and is designed purely as a trap for people reacting to what they see.