Yes, they have some very small amount of time to predict the future path of the ball based on the motion and initial behavior of the ball, and begin a swing bas

Yes, they have some very small amount of time to predict the future path of the ball based on the motion and initial behavior of the ball, and begin a swing based on that. Apparently a fastball takes just under half a second from release to plate, and a swing takes 150ms to execute. That gives the batter about 300ms to decide whether to start a swing, which I'm guessing is around the same amount of time between hits in table tennis. Of course, I don't know how much a batter can adjust and aim the bat mid-swing. Also, some table tennis shots give you way less time than 0.3 seconds, but those are usually slams that would only be successfully returned if the player made a lucky guess.