Best Launch Angles For Distance: How To Hit Line Drives & Square Up Baseball Instead Of Hitting Ground Balls

Discover the best launch angles for batted ball distance, and learn how to hit more line drives and square up the baseball or softball instead of hitting too many ground balls. Check out this interview with EffectiveVelocity.com’s Perry Husband…

Why You SHOULD NOT Teach Hitters To Hit Homers?

Here’s the Hitting Jam Session Interview Collection with Perry Husband:

1. [YOU ARE HERE] Why You Should Not Teach Hitters To Hit Homers?
2. What’s The Biggest Mistake Coaches Make In Boosting Ball Exit Speeds
3. How To Make Teaching Proper Weight Shift In Swing More Understandable To Hitter
4. Teach: How To STOP Hitting Excess Of Ground-balls & Fly-balls
5. 5,000 Swing Experiments Validate Locked Lead Arm Is Superior To Bent
6. Overload Bat Training: Hitting Has To Work Butt Off To Resist “Casting”

Here’s what we discuss in Hitting Jam Session #1:

• Formal Introductions
• Carlos Pena and Boston Red Sox hitting coach phone conversation for segment on MLB Now Show,
• Bro-Science v. REAL Science,
• How to know who/what to follow,
• Demystifying Launch Angles, and
• Q&A…

You can also CLICK HERE to view the original video and comments from the Jam Session on Facebook.

Show Notes

• At about the 3-minute mark, Perry Husband shares a phone conversation he had with Carlos Pena and Boston Red Sox hitting coach Tim Hyers about Effective Velocity (EV) tunnels from a hitter’s perspective (watch Liquid Analytic videos to MLB Now segments below)
• At about 5-min, 30-secs mark, cool swing experiment Perry did with Tim Hyers in the past, showing how same speed pitch “appears” faster or slower depending on location in the zone, and how this disrupts a hitter’s reactionary timing (aka hitter’s “attention”).  Gear hitters to a speed, they focus on that speed – changing it causes hitters to be early or late.
• At about 12-min, 30-min mark, the basic idea of Liquid Analytics, and how to look at pitchers through EV “eyes” we can get hitters to understand the best approach against certain pitchers.  How pitchers adapt to changes to hitter’s approach, it’s like a Chess game, approaches can shift and change multiple times throughout the game, and how to use Liquid Analytics to make these changes predictable.
• At about 15-min mark, we talk about sabotaging hitting coaches who have no clue how to counter EV by releasing EV 101, 202, and 303 to pitchers.  This will take a couple years for younger pitchers to catch up.  Our hitters will have the anecdote.  2018 World Series was a great picture of a team using EV on both sides of the ball (Red Sox), and a team that really wasn’t (Dodgers).  Any hitting approach right now will get away with murder, but when pitchers get EV efficient, most approaches that don’t take EV into account will die off.
• At about 20-min mark, Perry using the football cornerback analogy to explain EV tunnels and where hitters tend to stay when it comes to timing pitches.
• At about 22-min mark, what is the main operating system you’re teaching your hitters? Decrease strikeouts? Hit homers?  Increase Batting Average?  Hard Hit Contact %?  Every drill, teach, hitting aid, etc. will lift up the main operating system, example of the early armbar teach in mechanics.
• At about 25-min mark, these Jam Sessions are an experiment in themselves, what you’re doing right now may be working, but someone somewhere is doing it better, how to find out what “optimizing” hitters looks like, tinker and test, tinker and test, Growth Mindset v. Fixed Mindset, swing experimentation, REAL Science v. “bro-science”, Scientific Method: question, hypothesis, research & study, collect data (experiment), conclusion, is data Science? Jam Sessions going forward…
• At about 31-min 30-sec mark, Perry starts talk on Launch Angles, Jay Bell experiment (at 10-degree Launch Angle), hit center of circular target at about 10-feet to measure Launch Angles, early or late hitter pulls or pushes the ball away from the center of the target, more ground-balls – hitting ball later in the swing arc, pop-fly – hitting ball earlier in the swing arc, comparing 9 possible golf shots to hitting, precision in golf.
• At about 36-minute mark, ranking 10 swings off a tee using the circular target, how many times hit the target, measuring precision how often swing line is inline with pitch, hitter is going to miss more than they hit it good, Aaron Judge 75% of his one-rep swing max a majority of the time, it’s not about hitting it perfect, it’s the quality of your misses.
• At about 41-min mark, are ALL ground-balls bad? 100-mph+ GB’s equals batting over .500 at the Big League levels, take out ground-ball hits and Donaldson hits .205, it’s about maxing out the Ground-balls, 90-mph fly-balls – how many guys hit .400? zero.  Did you know MLB skews data on fly-balls by adding line drives in the formula.
• At about 45-min mark, I talk with my hitters about hitting the ball back through the “tube” that it came from, roughly misses are 40% up, 20% on a line, and 40% are down, trying to hit fly-balls causes more ground-balls?  Base your hitter’s operating system on the Jay Bell 10-degree Launch Angle, -5-degrees to 25-degrees highest exit velocities – keep misses within 10-degrees above or below the 10-degree line, extreme up Launch Angles will create a big hole in the swing for EV-minded pitchers to exploit, it’s about the “miss”
• At about 50-min mark, we finish with Q&A…

Where you can find more about Perry Husband:

1. HittingIsAGuess.com (Effective Velocity) use discount code: EV25 for 25% OFF
2. Twitter: @EVPerryHusband