Zepp Swing Experiment: Here’s a Quick Way to Fix a Flat Bat at Landing (and WHY!)
Discover fundamental how to coach quick hands, contact, and power hitting drills, techniques for beginners, and basic youth drills for baseball and softball players in the 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12 year old age range, in 2022. This Zepp swing experiment targeting a ‘flat’ bat at stride landing is VERY age appropriate for the ages previously mentioned.
Fundamental Baseball Question: How Does a Flat Bat at Landing Effect Bat Speed, Ball Exit Speed, & Time To Impact?
Using the Zepp (Labs) Baseball app and Pocket Radar Ball Coach, I wanted to employ the Scientific Method to analyze how a hitter’s “Flat Bat at Landing”, or toe touch, adds or takes away from keyswing performance metrics including Bat Speed at Impact, Time To Impact, Attack Angle, and Ball Exit Speeds.
Let me define what I mean by ‘Flat Barrel’ versus a ‘Vertical Barrel’…
A ‘Flat Barrel’ at landing is anything less than a 30-degree angle (like Cargo in the above video as an example),
A ‘Vertical Barrel’ at landing is anything more than a 30-degree angle.
Now that we’ve defined the parameters, let’s look at the…
SCIENCE-BASED TRAINING:
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Notice where the “dot” is drawn on the two static images left side, and where it’s drawn on the two dynamic images right side. Photo courtesy: GymSmartsCommunity.com
My background research is more experiential, rather than academic.
I have hitters do a mini-experiment by holding the bat in their bottom hand, laid flat (parallel to ground) over their back shoulder. And then ask them to hold the bat, using the same hand, but vertical. I then ask them which bat position is heavier/lighter? Of course they say the vertical bat is lighter. I then ask WHY? And I get a few different answers…
What is the fundamental baseball answer? Because we’re not adding or taking weight away from the bat by doing this…
It has to do with center of mass of the bat in relation to the hitter’s. A ‘Flat Bat at Landing’ pushes its center of mass behind the hitter’s. A human’s center of mass is generally around the belly button. To find the bat’s center of mass you can balance it between your thumb and forefinger.
I’ve also observed when adjusting a hitter’s ‘Flat Bat at Landing’ to a more ‘Vertical Bat at Landing’, there’s a bump in Ball Exit Speed, which I measure at the beginning (before instruction is given) and end of a hitting lesson. My hitter’s also share they feel quicker to impact, have a little more ‘pop’, and that it’s easier getting the ball in the air.
It’s also interesting to note that I see quite a bit of early barring of the front arm when the hitter lands with a flat barrel. I also see the hitter “wrapping the bat” around their head. In my opinion this is a compensation to manipulate the shifted center mass of the bat from behind the hitter.
CLICK HERE to watch this fundamental baseball video on how to fix a ‘Flat Bat at Impact’.
Hypothesis
Look at the difference in bat angle at landing between Carlos Gonzalez (left) – “Flat” and Cody Bellinger (right) – “Vertical”. Just because a Big Leaguer does it doesn’t mean it’s effective or optimized. Oftentimes they succeed despite ineffective mechanics. Photos courtesy: MLB.com
In support of the Background Research above, I’m hallucinating that we’ll see a bump in Bat and Ball Exit Speeds, in addition to a reduction in Time To Impact. I also think that we’ll see a more positive move in the barrel’s Attack Angle.
Flat Versus Vertical Bat at Landing Experiment
Equipment Used:
Zepp Baseball app (to measure Bat Speed, Hand Speed, Time to Impact, & Attack Angle),
Yellow dimple ball feedback markers to keep starting footwork the same = bat length…I used two yellow dimple ball markers to make my stance setup consistent. One was placed inside my back foot, close to the plate. The other was placed one bat’s length ahead of the back marker.
Backspin tee was set one baseball’s length behind the front feedback marker, and tee height was about mid-thigh
We stayed as consistent as we could with keeping the ball height and depth the same for most swings.
I broke each swing down into a couple steps: 1) Get to landing, 2) Pause for 2-secs, and 3) Swing. The reason for this was to control the bat either flat or vertical at landing.
The two tests in the swing experiment were counter-balanced. Which consisted of eight blocks of 25-swings done in the following order ABBA BAAB. ‘Flat Bat at Landing’ was letter ‘A’, and ‘Vertical Bat at Landing’ was letter ‘B’. 200 total swings were completed in the experiment, 100 per test. Counter-balancing helps remove the “getting tired” and “warm up” factors.
The objective of ‘Front Facing Swings’ was to start the ‘belt buckle’ pointing at the pitcher, and to minimize pelvic movement.
Fundamental baseball Experiment Day-1 on 7/5 we completed 150 total swings (75 ‘Flat Barrel at Landing’ & 75 ‘Vertical Barrel at Landing’). Experiment Day-2 on 7/10 we completed 50 swings (25 ‘Flat Bat at Landing’ & 25 ‘Vertical Bat at Landing’).
We had to break the 200 total swings into two days, with the second day coming 1 week later, because of time constraints.
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Data Collected (Zepp Baseball App & Ball Exit Speed Readings):
‘Flat Bat Swings’ Days 1 & 2 side by side…
Flat Barrel at Landing swing averages of the averages: 76-MPH Bat Speed at Impact, 26.5-MPH Hand Speed Max, .209 Time To Impact, -32* Bat Vertical Angle at Impact, & 8.5* Attack Angle.
‘Vertical Barrel Swings’ Days 1 & 2 side by side…
Vertical Barrel at Landing swing averages of the averages: 76-MPH Bat Speed at Impact, 27-MPH Hand Speed Max, .206 Time To Impact, 30.5* Bat Vertical Angle at Impact, & 8.5* Attack Angle.
CLICK HERE for the Ball Exit Speed Google document. The findings?
Flat Barrel at Landing AVERAGE Ball Exit Speed = 79.01-MPH
Vertical Barrel at Landing AVERAGE Ball Exit Speed = 81.08-MPH
Difference = 2.01-MPH Ball Exit Speed bump with more Vertical Barrel at Landing
Data Analysis & Fundamental Baseball Conclusion
Zepp data analysis comparing the averages of averages:
We saw NO change to Bat Speed at Impact between the two swings,
We saw a 0.5-MPH boost to Hand Speed Max when holding a ‘Vertical Bat at Landing’,
We saw a .003 second reduction in Time To Impact when holding a ‘Vertical Bat at Landing’,
We saw a +1.5-degree increase to Bat Vertical Angle at Impact when holding a ‘Vertical Bat at Landing’,
We saw NO change to the Attack Angle between the two swings, and
We saw a 2.01-MPH increase in Ball Exit Speed when holding a ‘Vertical Bat at Landing’.
Based on the above Data Analysis it looks like my Hypothesis was proved right when it came to a boost in Hand Speed Max and Ball Exit Speed, and decrease in Time To Impact, but wrong when it came to Bat Speed at Impact and Attack Angle. I think the increase in Ball Exit Speed can be attributed to the decrease in Time To Impact.
When we see ineffective movement at the Big League level, we have to understand that these high level hitters are succeeding despite ineffective movements, not because of them.
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Swing Study reveals how majority of hitters are correcting 'racing back elbow' bat drag within 1-2 weeks WITHOUT overhauling swing mechanics OR buying fancy and expensive hitting aids.
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https://hittingperformancelab.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/carlos-gonzalez-cody-bellinger-flat-versus-vertical-bat-e1499868435121.png265450Joey Myershttps://hittingperformancelab.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/hitting-performance-labs_c90c0362088ef1d3d528f3078f4f8ac1-300x75.pngJoey Myers2022-04-20 09:00:492022-04-20 19:51:21Fundamental How To Coach Quick Hands, Contact, & Power Hitting Drills, Beginner Techniques, & Basic Drills For Youth Baseball And Softball 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 Year Olds In 2022
“The locked out front knee is a more consistent method that results in a hard transfer of weight creating more power and less variation since it is the same every time. Coach Joe Brockhoff’s system is a great example.
I teach to lockout the leg when the heel hits the ground. I think if this method is causing too many ground balls there is something else going on with it. With the proper weight distribution and rotation throughout it is the most natural and consistent method.”
And I mostly agree. However, I think there’s some confusion about what the front knee position should look like at landing.
In this baseball hitting mechanics for youth post, I want to address my top-6 reasons for landing bent:
Engaging springy fascia in the legs,
Pitch adaptability to off speed pitches,
Shrinking the strike zone,
Using Ground Reaction Forces,
Getting eyes closer to lower pitches in the zone, and
How humans change directions and planes of motion…
And, at the end, I wanted to clean up WHY I like my hitters to straighten their front leg at impact, however please note this IS NOT an absolute, especially when looking at a hitter like Cody Bellinger (he’s not the only one who does this)…look at the catcher’s glove which shows pitch location (down)…
1. Engaging Springy Fascia in the Legs
Watch Thomas Myers, from his book Anatomy Trains, explain the importance of fascia (said like Fashia).
If you aren’t analyzing baseball hitting mechanics for youth based on the rules of fascia, then you’re wasting your hitters’ time.
It’s not enough to base the swing off firing fast twitch muscles fibers. Repeatable power is in how we load fascia and fast twitch muscles.
For our purposes in this post, a hitter MUST be bending the knees at landing to engage, what Thomas Myers calls, the Spiral & Deep Functional Lines extending down as a stirrup under the feet.
My friend Lee Comeaux, who works with professional golfers out in Texas, has studied Thomas Myers’s book more extensively than myself, and he’s found the amount of bend in the knees at landing must add up to 45-degrees.
Same with the arms.
But my baseball hitting mechanics for youth point is, there has to be some bending in the knees at landing to activate the springy fascia contained in the legs. And the amount of bend will depend on the amount of Forward Momentum, and whether we’re talking a fastpitch or baseball hitter.
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In the above baseball hitting mechanics for youth video, I use Hanley Ramirez to demonstrate how important the bending of the front knee is to making timing adjustments to off-speed pitches. CLICK HERE for the full HPL post.
In his book Positional Hitting, Jaime Cevallos called the hitter bending into the front knee at landing, or to buy more time, the:
‘Cushion’ (normal timing), or
‘Double Cushion’ (off-speed timing).
JK Whited and Chas Pippitt of the Baseball Rebellion calls it ‘pushing the pause button’.
And we typically see this if a hitter is sitting fastball, and adjusting to off-speed or breaking balls.
3. Shrinking the Strike Zone
Watch the above baseball hitting mechanics for youth video I did February 13, 2014 of Barry Bonds ‘getting shorter’. It’s received over 47,789 views on YouTube. You can also find this ‘getting shorter’, OR shrinking the strike zone, approach with (pay attention to the action of their landing knee)…
Josh Donaldson
Jose Bautista
Mike Trout
Bryce Harper
And, Dustin Pedroia
Please do a baseball hitting mechanics for youth experiment for me…
Go into your bathroom with a bat (don’t worry, I’m not going to make you swing it)…
Get into your stance facing the mirror, as the pitcher…
Now, draw a line on the mirror just above your head, using a dry erase pen.
Okay, so now stride and land with a straight front leg… (make sure you have an athletic gap between your feet after striding).
Note the gap between where the top of your head is now, and the line you drew on the mirror.
Now, stride and land with a bent front leg,
How much of a gap there?
If you observe this little experiment with your hitters, you’ll see how we’re effectively ‘shrinking the strike zone’ by landing, what I call, ‘shorter’.
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Watch Chris Welch from Zenolink give a simplified background on Ground Reaction Forces (or GRF’s).
Basically, you push into the ground, and the ground pushes back, with equal and opposite force.
It’s VERY difficult to harness GRF’s when your knees are straight.
Try jumping as high as you can with straight knees.
Try running as fast as you can with straight knees (you’d look like Forest Gump with his leg braces on!!!) lol
Try defending a forward in basketball…
…a soccer striker…
…and an offensive Lineman on “the line” in football…
…with straight knees.
My baseball hitting mechanics for youth point is, you have to be athletic to hit. And landing with a straight front leg doesn’t allow the hitter to optimally use GRF’s.
This also goes for the hitter’s stance. I like my hitters to start with bend in their knees, regardless of the width of their feet.
5. Get Eyes Closer to Lower Pitches in the Zone
Taylor Gardner of the Backspin Tee brought this to my attention. Watch what happens to the first baseman’s head when receiving a throw…
The first base person strides forward toward the incoming ball, and bends the front knee (‘gets shorter’) to get the eyes closer to the ball.
A hitter MUST do the same thing, although the ball isn’t coming straight at them like the first baseman in the video.
The pitch is coming in sideways.
And to be more consistent with hitting the ball hard, we have to teach our hitters to bring their body – somewhat – down to the pitch’s level.
In other words, you don’t hit a low pitch consistently well by landing on a stiff front knee.
6. How Humans Change Direction & Planes of Motion
Pay attention to how Armanti Edwards and other NFL wide receivers change direction while doing a “Route Tree Session” with trainer Gari Scott…
Watch them run routes from a big picture point of view. In other words, not looking for any specific arm or leg angles.
Watch them ‘get lower’ when changing directions, or cutting.
They land on a bent plant leg, then push off the same leg, extending it, to accelerate again.
Three main planes of motion. Photo courtesy: goldsgymwebsterny.wordpress.com
There are three main human planes of motion:
Saggital – divides the body into right and left halves
Frontal (a.k.a. Coronal) – any vertical plane that divides the body into ventral and dorsal (belly and back), and
Transverse (a.k.a. horizontal plane, axial plane, or transaxial plane) – is an imaginary plane that divides the body into superior and inferior parts. It is perpendicular to the coronal and sagittal planes.
In changing from one plane of motion to the other, there MUST be a ‘getting shorter’ of the body’s stature, as the athlete plants and pushes off the ground to change directions.
The wide receivers above are changing from the Sagittal (front to back) to Frontal (sideways) Planes. While a hitter changes from the Frontal (sideways) to Transverse (rotational) Planes.
In other words, just like an NFL wide receiver goes from a bent plant leg to straight at push off, a hitter MUST go from a bent landing leg, to a straight leg at ‘push off’. You don’t see these wide receivers keeping a ‘slight bend’ at the end of their push off.
So this brings me to the million dollar baseball hitting mechanics for youth question,
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CLICK HERE for a Zepp experiment I did where I looked at the Discus technique of ‘blocking’. ‘Blocking’ is basically the action of going from a bent front leg at landing, to straight at impact.
I took 100 swings landing bent versus landing straight with the front leg…
Results?
As you can see, landing bent with the front leg, then moving to straight at impact, added an average of 6-mph of bat speed!
CLICK HERE for another HPL article I did on ‘blocking’ analyzing Edwin Encarnacion’s swing.
Okay, so now that you’re following me on this,
Let’s look at the function of the front leg at impact, and WHY I choose to teach my hitters to straighten it versus keeping it bent…
Homer Kelly wrote The Golfing Machine. He was an aeronautical engineer for Boeing during the Great Depression, and fell in love with golf, and applied his engineering principles to the golf swing.
About ‘Knee Action’ Homer Kelly says:
“The slant is up in the direction of a straightened Knee. The slant of the Hips affects the degree of the Hip Turn. Actually, the primary function of Knee Action – as with Waist Bend – is to maintain a motionless Head during the Stroke.”
There’s a lot going on in that statement that you can run with…
But did you catch the bolded part?
We slant our body up in the direction of the straightened knee. And this is assuming we’re working with enough bend in the back knee during the turn.
In other words, the pitcher is throwing downhill, and also yes in fastpitch the ball is falling down by the time it reaches the last 20% of ball flight.
Photo from “The Science of Hitting”, book by Ted Williams
So if the hitter wants to be consistent, they MUST match the downward pitched plane with a positive barrel attack angle (barrel traveling up to impact), not negative (or down).
And according to Homer Kelly, the front knee must get to straight before impact, in order to slant the hitter (or golfer) up.
This is WHY I teach my hitters to land bent, then straighten the front leg at impact. Big Leaguers don’t all do this of course.
There are many BIG slugger examples of keeping a slight bend in the front knee at impact, Mark McGwire and Mark Teixeira to name a few…
But I work with A LOT of smaller hitters that can’t afford to be mechanically ineffective at driving the ball. I base my hitting program on human movement principles that are validated by science. Not on theory, philosophy, or what I think is right or wrong.
I hold my hitters’ swings to a higher standard. A standard that’s validated by science.
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Frustrated with fixing BAT DRAG? Beat it!
Swing Study reveals how majority of hitters are correcting 'racing back elbow' bat drag within 1-2 weeks WITHOUT overhauling swing mechanics OR buying fancy and expensive hitting aids.
Click button below to access FREE video that has been downloaded over 20K times!
https://hittingperformancelab.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/planes-of-movement1.jpg18722268Joey Myershttps://hittingperformancelab.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/hitting-performance-labs_c90c0362088ef1d3d528f3078f4f8ac1-300x75.pngJoey Myers2022-04-16 09:48:402022-04-16 16:48:35Proper Front Foot Stride, Knee, Leg Position When Batting In Baseball & Softball | Hitting Drills To Keep Feet Still During Swing
STOP Pulling Off The Ball, Increase Batting Average, and Boost Power By Using The Closed Stance?
What’s the best batting stance for power? How do we STOP a hitter from stepping in the bucket (out of the box) when hitting a baseball or softball in 2022? This post will shine light on how to see the ball better, keep the front shoulder in during the swing, and will suggest the best batting stance for power…
I know, I know,
Some well meaning coaches will think, “Well, a closed stance cuts off a hitter’s vision, and/or restricts hip movement”…
I get it. I used to believe the same thing a couple years ago,
…But what I found in my research was counter-intuitive, yet very promising for hitters.
Giancarlo Stanton using his “closed stance”. Photo courtesy: MLB.com
You don’t know what you don’t know, right?
My process is to chew and digest the science, observe how elite hitters apply the movements, and then try it out!
As you’ll soon find out, Giancarlo Stanton did his homework before making this particular change in his swing.
Since there may be many of you raising the same objections I started with, I wanted to discuss:
Addressing the above “Study of Planes” video, then we’ll move on to…
Analyzing the small change that has netted BIG results for Giancarlo Stanton this season.
Study of Planes
My good friend Seo Perales shared the above video with me a few years ago. By the way, he’s a multiple level black belt in Brazilian Jujitsu.
We love comparing notes because we both like to seek and explore human movement principles that are validated by science. The only difference is, in his line of work as a Jujitsu instructor, he wants to learn how to break down the body, and I’m into maximizing its effect.
The above video demonstrates the science of movement planes. What are considered weak and strong planes of movement from a Judo perspective.
I think you’ll find the video enlightening.
Now, you may be thinking, “A Judo video? Really?! What can I learn from a video about Judo?”
If you find yourself camped out in ONLY baseball or softball circles, then you’re missing out on A LOT of useful information that will take your hitters to a whole other level.
The video is very applicable to hitting.
Furthermore,
My good friend Lee Comeaux from Texas, who teaches professional and amateur golfers, also brought the power of movement planes to my attention about a year ago…
He told me draw an “X” in the batter’s box from opposite corners, and have the hitter stand on either line when hitting. He’s very versed in Thomas Myers’s book Anatomy Trains. He says hitters standing on one diagonal leg of the “X” encourages the springiness of fascia. He taught this to his 15yo daughter, who has hit over .600 the last couple years playing Fast-Pitch Softball in Texas, which is one of the hotbeds for both baseball and softball competition in the country. Oh and by the way, she also hit a half dozen homers as well.
The second part of this post, I wanted to share the tipping point in addressing Giancarlo Stanton’s new closed stance…
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You can go there and read the full article, but I wanted to tease out the quotes from Giancarlo Stanton (and some of David Adler’s commentary), and how Stanton arrived at the batting stance change…
“I just said I was going to try it. Honestly, I had about 30 minutes of work, maybe 45 minutes, before the game,” Stanton told MLB.com Sunday, when he crushed his Major League-leading 45th home run against the Mets at Citi Field. “And then 10 minutes before the game, I was like, ‘This feels more comfortable.'”
Stanton was already having a helluva year, so it’s interesting to me that he made the change when he did, typically a change like this follows a slump. However, this wasn’t a spur of the moment decision – like it sounds from that quote – he did his homework, which you’ll read about shortly…
“My best striking position is closed,” Stanton said. “It’s not smart to try to completely change something in the middle of the season. But if you are 100 percent committed to it … well, you’ve got to be. You’ve got to trust what you’re trying to do. If you change something, you want results right away, otherwise you try to go back. But I trusted it completely and let it ride.”
Sounds contradictory doesn’t it? To have the attitude that you can’t completely change something in the middle of the season – especially when you’re already doing well!! But then he says you MUST commit to giving the change time – that is – IF you’ve done your homework beforehand.
I’ve heard some parents and coaches say mid-season changes aren’t smart. I don’t like to think that way…WHY? Because if you don’t guide the hitter, the hitter will make changes on their own. And if they don’t get highly resourceful on the subject, then this could lead to DISASTER with all the junk hitting info on the net these days.
David Adler did fantastic research illustrating the evolution of Giancarlo Stanton’s closed stance in this Tweet:
You’ve seen how Stanton’s closed his stance by now. But it’s still cool to look at the different stages this season. All these are home runs pic.twitter.com/1xxFGgwIUL
“Stanton’s closing of his batting stance has correlated with his massive power surge. On June 18, he had 17 home runs in 282 plate appearances; since June 19, he has 28 in 236.
When Stanton hits from those positions [open or straight up], his front side can come open before the pitch arrives, leaving him exploitable.
The closed stance is a natural counter. When Stanton is already turned inward to start, his rotation drives him into the pitch, instead of causing him to fade away from it.”
By the way, for those not doing the math:
From start of season to June 18th, he hit 1 homer every 16.5 plate appearances, and
From June 19th on, he hit 1 homer every 8.4 plate appearances…
He cut his rate in half!!!! The closed stance was the ONLY change to his swing in that time frame, so this makes an interesting case study with a decent sample size of plate appearances. See for yourself with the following David Adler Tweet:
Even w/ Giancarlo Stanton’s new closed stance, his swing’s the same. But his feet force him in, help him stay on the ball. L: Aug. R: April pic.twitter.com/v5eXYpq5YB
David Adler adds some terms of comparision you may be familiar with…
“With his adjusted stance, Stanton has been driving the ball in the air more often. His rate of fly balls and line drives, per Statcast™, has risen from 41.5 percent prior to June 19 to 50.3 percent since. Stanton’s average exit velocity on those balls has increased from 97.6 mph to 100.8 mph, the highest in the Majors over that time.”
I don’t care that Stanton is a beast, if you increase your Line Drive and Fly Ball Rates (Launch Angle), and Ball Exit Speeds that much, you’ll make a lot of Ground-ball teams VERY VERY upset. Small hitters CAN and DO take advantage of this formula too. Statcast has given hitters the cheat codes to increase offensive productivity!
Furthermore, in the Adler article…
“[His stance] gets him in the position he wants to be in. It looks like it’s keeping him on the ball more, and he seems like he’s seeing it better,” said Christian Yelich, who’s played alongside Stanton as long as any current Marlin — since 2013, when he was 21 and Stanton 23. “Some guys have different problems than others. You go about fixing them or covering them in different ways. It’s all about feel. That’s what works for him, that feel.”
Look at that bold sentence once more because that is one of the most critical keys to this whole thing. Yelich is also tapping into making extreme adjustments, for example, Stanton’s challenge in the past has been pulling off, maybe because of when he tragically got hit in the face a few years ago. Whatever the reason, the extreme adjustment (a closed stance), helps him stay on the ball longer.
CLICK HERE for a video I did on how to make adjustments…the scientific term for this is “Paradoxical Intention”.
Now, here is where the article gets into the research that brought Giancarlo Stanton to the point of taking the stance change seriously…
“But at a level of the game where emulation is fundamental, success begetting imitators, Stanton found his prototypes: Nolan Arenado, Matt Kemp, Adrian Beltre, prominent hitters who do close off. He recognized past greats, too: Hall of Famer Andre Dawson works as a special assistant to the Marlins, and he hit with a closed stance in his playing career. Stanton didn’t copy the technical aspects of their batting stances, but their accomplishments gave him precedent to actually make the change himself.“
Some on Twitter have written this change off as a band-aide, avoiding a true fix. A true fix? Are you kidding me?! Cutting his home-run per plate appearance rate in half IS NOT a true fix!? Dude!! Success leaves clues. These people are saying Giancarlo Stanton is “playing to the slice”, where a golfer who chronically slices the ball will angle his body at setup so they don’t have to fix the real problem…which is not squaring up the club face at impact.
This is a poor attempt to protect an inflexible teaching philosophy, and sheer laziness on their part to get educated on their craft they claim to know a lot about. You instructors seriously think Giancarlo Stanton is not “squaring the ball up” at impact since June 19th and is just “playing the slice”? That is laughable. You don’t know what you don’t know, right?
This is the problem I have with instructors with inflexible hitting systems…they’re WILLFULLY IGNORANT to experimenting with things that could push their hitters forward, especially movements validated by science. We’re ALL in this together, and we’re ALL helping hitters. It’s NOT about your ego or protecting “your brand” coaches.
But I digress…
Here’s some insight into Giancarlo Stanton’s thought process with the change…
“I just know the guys with success,” Stanton said. “Arenado and Kemp, those guys, you know you can have a high average with it. So that kind of gave me the green light to try it…I knew it could work. Not very many people did it. But I know people like Hawk and them did it in the old days — and it worked for them, too.”
The Bottom Line…
A day or two after re-tweeting Homer Bush’s Tweet about Giancarlo Stanton’s closed stance, I received this response from @Omaha_Outlaws4…
I understand your objections that a closed stance may cut off a hitter’s vision, and/or restricts hip movement. You’ve heard me talk a lot about “keeping the back foot sideways”, well, this plays right into that.
Matt Nokes is religious on restricting hip movement to the point of impact with keeping the back foot sideways. Homer Bush agrees in this interview. So are the Backspin Tee guys Taylor and Jarrett Gardner. LIGHT BULB! The closed stance does this naturally.
The main benefit of restricting hip movement at impact (includes keeping back foot sideways) that you’ll hear from Nokes, Bush, and the Gardner Brothers, is to keep the barrel in the hitting zone longer. This increases BA and Slug%.
Here’s my advice:
Chew and digest the science,
Observe how elite hitters apply the movements, and then
Try itout!
If it doesn’t work after giving it the ol’ college try, then toss it.
As many of you know, I will gladly eat crow and change my hitting system IF you can show me the science, swing experiments, and many elite hitting examples that I can’t ignore the issue.
This is an informal Part-1 to a Zepp swing experiment I’ll be doing on the Giancarlo Stanton closed stance in the near future. So stay tuned…
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Frustrated with fixing BAT DRAG? Beat it!
Swing Study reveals how majority of hitters are correcting 'racing back elbow' bat drag within 1-2 weeks WITHOUT overhauling swing mechanics OR buying fancy and expensive hitting aids.
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https://hittingperformancelab.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/giancarlo-stanton-closed-stance-e1503613446475.png338500Joey Myershttps://hittingperformancelab.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/hitting-performance-labs_c90c0362088ef1d3d528f3078f4f8ac1-300x75.pngJoey Myers2022-04-04 09:10:442022-04-05 20:52:52STOP Stepping In The Bucket & Out Of The Box When Hitting A Baseball Or Softball 2022 | How To See Ball Better, Keep Front Shoulder In During Swing, & Best Batting Stance For Power?
Discover how to use the legs when hitting a baseball or softball in the 2023 year. Does a powerful swing depend on footwork, hitting against a firm front side or a straightened front leg, front foot, or do the hips play a big role. Learn batting drills to optimizing legs ARE NOT what you may think…
Answered: “How To Get My Kid To Stop Rising And For Him To Utilize His Legs More During Batting?”
Here’s what we cover in the above video:
Legs DO NOT equal power – water polo example,
What is leg function in swing & Adjusting to pitch height,
Distance between the feet equal more control over line drives,
GRF’s but not as much as you think,
Buying time – back foot sideways, directional force, & pushing the “pause” button, and
How to utilize the legs in the swing?
Hey, what’s going on. It’s Joey Myers again from ‘Hitting Performance Lab’. In this video, we’re going to answer the following reader question:
“How to get my kid stop rising, and for him to utilize his legs more during batting?”
Now this is a question that comes either through a form, survey, or email or even from my local lessons. The coaches out there in the high schools tend to meddle a bit too much, subscribing to the hitting myth that: ‘it’s all about the legs’, or ‘you need to use your legs more’.
In this video, I want to talk about what that means, and what is the function of the legs…
SCIENCE-BASED TRAINING:
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Learn not only how and what to train but also the science behind the methods.
Legs are only 20-30% of the consistent power equation, and most of that is in the function of the pelvis. If you’re a coach and power is the deficiency in your hitter’s swing, then it’s the spinal engine you want to focus on. The Catapult Loading System is where 70-80% of consistent power is found. The best example I like to share can be found in water polo.
What is Leg Function in Swing & Adjusting to Pitch Height
Now a couple things, one is they help to adjust to pitch height. If you’re looking at hitters like Cody Bellinger of the Dodgers, Joc Pederson of the Dodgers, Corey Seager, looking at Anthony Rizzo of the Cubs or some of the past players like Adrian Beltre or Pedroia. When the pitch is down in the zone, you tend to see them bend their front knee to go down and get it. They tend to do that consistently on those pitches, those lower in the zone pitches, not locking out their front knee like many teach.
I’ve seen these same hitters Rizzo, Bellinger, I’ve seen them with a bent front knee hit balls 440 to 460 feet. So, locking out the front knee IS NOT all about power. So, this raises a question of, if you want a hitter to use their legs more often because you think it has to do with power, well that is just not true – that’s not what we’re seeing. So, adjusting to pitch height, and you can study the hitters discussed as examples.
Distance between the Feet Equal more Control over Line Drives
Distance between the feet, this is a big one, that we can use the legs or utilize the legs to allow hitters to hit more line drives. The problem happens when, say if we are teaching our hitters to skip their back foot that they end up skipping their feet too close together. Or it could be they don’t stride that much. They don’t skip at all and, so their feet tend to be closer together. What we want is what you see with the top 50, top 100 hitters in the big leagues….
You’re going to see distance between their feet. So, whether that is a longer stride and their front foot moves away from their back foot. Whether they don’t skip but they don’t stride as much, you still see that wideness of their feet. You see them scissor, you see different things like that, but what they all have in common, all the top hitters in the big leagues, is they have distance between their feet. When the feet come close together, it makes the hitter taller, which this reader is asking how to keep the hitter from “rising”. The taller the hitter gets, the more in the ground the ball is gonna get hit.
If the hitter knows better, and they try and get the ball in the air, even though they have narrow feet during their turn. Then they’re gonna do something unnatural with their hands to try and get under it, which we don’t want them to do either. Because that is going to cause uppercuts. It’s going to cause inconsistencies in their swing path.
GRF’s, but not as much as you think
I just mentioned that hitters don’t have to lock their front knee out for power. When you think about ground reaction forces (GRF’s), they DO play a role. I’m not taking away from ground reaction forces, or saying “Oh, well the legs don’t do anything in the swing”.
No, they do. It’s about a 20 to 30% increase in power by using the legs. Most of that though is in the pelvis, and the rest in the spinal engine. I tell my hitters that the spinal engine, their combination of your shoulders and how you use them. Neck, shoulders, and pelvis account for about 70 to 80% of the power. That gets you to the wall. The legs help get you over the wall. So, you do need the legs, and it’s like what Dr. Serge Gracovetsky, the author of the ‘Spinal Engine’ said, that locomotion, the arms and legs aren’t necessary for locomotion, they’re an enhancement, they help enhance movement of the spinal engine.
So, we’re not taking away from the legs, the use of the legs, and how they can benefit the swing. It’s just that they’re an enhancement to the spinal engine, the taller the player is, the longer the levers, the more the force multiplier at the end of that lever. So, guys like Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton are gonna have longer levers, if they lengthen those levers at impact. When we’re talking about the front arm shape, they’re gonna hit the ball pound-for-pound, apples-to-apples swings farther than Jose Altuve with the locked out-front arm. It’s just because the longer limbs enhance more, they’re more of a force multiplier.
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Buying Time – Back Foot Sideways, Directional Force, & Pushing the “Pause” Button
Buying time. So, the lower half, the legs can help buy time. Jamie Cevallos in his book ‘Positional Hitting’ way back, I think it was in the early 2000’s or mid to late 2000’s. He talked about this idea of a ‘Cushion’. You’ll see a hitter especially, if they’re looking fastball, and they see a curve ball or changeup. You’ll see them actually bend, sink, or cushion into their knees. They use their knees by bending them to buy them a little bit of time to get on time a lot better. It’s pushing the ‘pause’ button.
The other thing we want to do to buy time, is keep the back foot sideways.
We talked about this idea of directional force, Matt Nokes, he says that to hit a ball 400 feet, it takes 8,000 pounds per square inch of force in one direction. In hitting, both in baseball and softball, we have 90 degrees to work with. The other 270 degrees is in foul territory, it doesn’t do a hitter any good or a team any good to play in that 270 degrees outside of a fair territory. We have to stay between the 90s, we have to stay between the lines. If you think about a bowler, every single professional bowler out there, “scissors” their legs.
I’m not saying that all hitters have to scissor. I just give my hitters that option. But if you think about bowlers, they bowl between a two-foot Lane. I don’t know if that’s correct or not, but it’s somewhere around that. They also put a spin on the ball, so if they over rotated their lower half, not keeping their back foot sideways, they’re over rotating their pelvis. Then what you would see is that ball bouncing into the outside lanes. Try scissoring your legs, then try and open your hips up more, and it’s almost impossible.
You want to make sure that we’re creating directional force, and that’s another thing the legs do. They help us stay between that 90 degrees, and use all 90 degrees effectively. That comes in handy at the higher levels when hitting to the opposite field is a lot more important, and when we see shifts. Most of the time, hitters are not very good about going the other way. You can see the hitters that do go the other way very well, their batting averages seem to be higher.
How do we Utilize the legs in the Swing?
Now again, if it’s power you want, this isn’t the place. You want to look at the Catapult Loading System, and harness the power of the spinal engine. If you want a majority of power, 70-80% of consistent power.
Getting Shorter, Staying Shorter
To properly utilize the legs in the swing, you want to look at getting shorter and staying shorter. You see most great hitters when you draw a line over their head before they stride, by the time they get to stride landing, you’re gonna see distance between where they started, and where their head is at stride landing. You’re gonna see what we call ‘Getting Shorter’.
Then as they swing, it’s almost like that bottom ladder rung they create at landing, they tend to stay under that line. What we do is, we could take a PVC pipe. We can put it at the start of the hitter swing, before they even stride…we can put it maybe at their nose or their chin, and we can have them practice getting the top of their head under that PVC pipe. As they swing, stay under that PVC pipe. I’ve also had my hitters get next to a piece of furniture that’s about the same height, then have them stride, and get their head to where, now they’re under the top of that, say dresser or whatever, or picture frame, could be anything around the house.
When they swing, do some slow motion swings, and they stay under that line. That’s a way to get shorter, stay shorter.
Okay to “bend the knee”
It’s okay to bend the knee, I also get my hitters to do this if necessary. We don’t really practice this, but I tell them it’s okay to bend the knee, if the pitch is down in the zone.
Distance between the feet
Also working distance between the feet, you can either get them to stride longer, or you can cut down on their skip. We usually try to manipulate one of those two things or both things to get that distance between the feet, so that allows them to hit more line drives or at least control their line drives.
Keep back foot sideways
Then keeping their back foot sideways. You can use the VeloPro, they use it in pitching a lot. But in hitting, we use the VeloPro.
We tell the hitter to make sure they keep their back foot, their back heel on the ground as they swing. Almost like you would see with George Springer, or Altuve, or Mike Trout, any of those kinds of hitters or in softball Sierra Romero. They keep their back heel on the ground and it turns sideways, so they stay sideways. They do a better job of staying between those 90 degrees.
One last thing on keeping the back foot sideways, as mentioned, scissoring helps with that as well. So, that’s something that you can play around with, and let your hitters’ experiment with.
Hope this answered the question of “How to get my kid to stop rising, and for him to utilize his legs more during the swing”. Make sure that we’re swinging smarter by moving better, and before I let you go…
'Add 40-Feet' To Batted Ball Distance
Swing Study reveals how tens of thousands of hitters are adding 40-feet to batted ball distance by using one simple strategy.
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https://hittingperformancelab.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/use-legs-more-in-swing-e1573766476979.png259500Joey Myershttps://hittingperformancelab.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/hitting-performance-labs_c90c0362088ef1d3d528f3078f4f8ac1-300x75.pngJoey Myers2022-04-04 09:01:082023-01-04 19:58:27How To Use Legs When Hitting Baseball Or Softball 2023 | Does Powerful Swing Depend On Footwork, Firm Front Side Or Straight Leg, Front Foot, Or Hips? | Batting Drills NOT What You Think
1) Can we improve launch angle hitting path (angle batted ball takes off the bat) for baseball and softball by swinging “down”? 2) What kind of swing plane drills or cues can we use to optimize batted ball distance? And 3) What is the ideal home run formula?
ANSWER – listen closely to Barry Bonds’ answers to Alex Rodriguez’s questions… (I’ve included my video stamped notes below)
ANSWER – CLICK HERE for Paradoxical Intention and CLICK HERE for how to properly teach ‘launch angle’ swing (not what you think)…
ANSWER – CLICK HERE for the ideal home run formula…
This baseball swing video where Alex Rodriguez interviews Barry Bonds was a two parter to this video post. Here are four of the interview’s finer points:
“X” factor. Why top hand and back shoulder have to communicate with front leg,
Per-fect swinging down because it’s easy to go up,
200+ Stikeouts as long as you hit 40-homers? And,
How bunting can ‘line up’ your hitting.
SCIENCE-BASED TRAINING:
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At about the 1-min, 40-sec mark, Alex Rodriguez asks Barry Bonds about the “Ferris wheel” v. “merry-go-round” swings. Bonds says he’s more of a down-angle swinger. “Down” means to flatten out the barrel path. Not talking about swinging straight down.
At about the 3-min mark, Barry Bonds goes into what he calls the “X” factor and the “center-line”. Back shoulder going to communicate with front leg. And front shoulder with back leg.
At about the 4-min, 15-sec mark, Alex Rodriguez asks Barry Bonds if he hits off his back leg. Causes head to fly open, front shoulder, and uppercut. Bonds talks about using top hand as “guide” hand, bottom is power. Top hand (back shoulder) and front leg have to communicate. If they don’t, then head can pull open.
At about 6-min, 30-sec mark, Alex Rodriguez asks Barry Bonds about the advice Barry give him about not dipping his back shoulder too much. Bonds expects hitters to work chopping ball off ground during tee work. It’s easy to go up. Over exaggerate down on a consistent basis. “Per-fect” the down level swing.
At about 9-min mark, Alex Rodriguez asks Barry Bonds about in today’s game it’s okay to strikeout over 200 times per season, just as long as you hit 40-homers. A-Rod asked Bonds how he developed the discipline and balance at the plate. Game has changed. Don’t blame the players, they adapt to the environment. In Barry’s day, had to hit .300, strikeout less than 100 times per season or you were sent down. Bonds was told growing up to be a great hitter. Home-runs don’t matter. Tony Gwynn was a big influence to Barry. Use line to line, that will open the gaps.
At about 11-min, 30-min mark, Barry and A-Rod talk about bunting against the shift. Bonds adds that bunting can always get you lined up for hitting. Playing “catch” with the baseball. Bunting slows things down. My buddy Aaron Miles tells a story about this.
At about 13-min mark, Alex Rodriguez asks Bonds that if he was graduating from Arizona in 2020, gets drafted by the Giants in a Sabermetrics heavy environment, would he have listened to his dad? Baseball is a eye hand coordination sports. Computers are limited on what they can predict.
At the 15-minute mark are Alex Rodriguez’s “takeaways”.
'Add 40-Feet' To Batted Ball Distance
Swing Study reveals how tens of thousands of hitters are adding 40-feet to batted ball distance by using one simple strategy.
Click the button below to access the FREE video that's been downloaded over 30K times!!
How Fast (or Slow) Until a Data-driven Swing Replaces an “Old School” One? (Baseball Analytics Shenanigans)
Baseball Analytics Photo courtesy: HittingNow.com
Why extremes are ALMOST never good
(Estimated reading time: 18-minutes)
Has the new way of baseball analytics changed baseball in 2022? Or are they ruining sports? I want to present a how to guide that translates data science metrics into hitting mechanics. Old school versus new school.
How did we get here with baseball analytics? The ‘Launch Angle’ era. Where did it originate? What was the tipping point of choosing Sabermetrics over traditional scouting? You’ll find out in the coming post. But first,
We’ll be discussing what a data-driven swing looks like – we’ll be covering:
Story of Minor League hitting coaches having almost ZERO hitting experience,
Pros of a data-driven swing,
Cons of a data-driven swing, and
How it’s bad (or good) to track ball exit speed and launch angle in the batting cage.
Once upon a time in the Minors…
Story of Minor League hitting coaches having almost ZERO hitting experience
I have an interesting story to talk about. A true story. In an almost magical land called the Minor Leagues. At the time, a little birdy playing for a National league professional organization whispered in my ear. This little birdy told me…
SCIENCE-BASED TRAINING:
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Their are budding baseball analytics hitting coaches sprouting up in some professional organizations – having almost zero hitting experience. No this isn’t fake news. These whirlybird propeller seeds are traveling by wind from the sparkling land of economics … planting their baby hitting coach seeds in fresh dark batter’s box soil. With a little gray water, bright sunlight, and the swift tap of a fairy’s wand… instantly sprouts an economics hitting fairy!
These magical Econ-hitting fairies are now happily coaching professional hitters on what they need to be feeling as a hitter … regardless of whether they’re hitting line drive after line drive … AND, with no more playing experience than Little League. Imagine the Mathlete schooling the High School Baseball Jock in everything hitting. And the Jock MUST listen or … YOU’RE FIRED!
Okay, so I may have embellished the story a bit. The Minor Leagues ARE NOT magical lands – just ask any Minor Leaguer. It wasn’t a little birdy that shared the story – it was a professional baseball human being. And sorry to kill your hopes and dreams, but magical Econ-hitting fairies aren’t born by adding gray water, sun, and the tapping of a fairy wand. C’mon man, everyone knows those aren’t real! Magical Econ-hitting fairies, I mean. Fairy wands are VERY real.
It is true though – how this story sounded in my head. It was an interesting story coming from a single-A ballplayer. That is, the state of professional baseball in the so-called ‘Launch Angle’ era. It does beg the question…
How are these baseball analytics Econ-hitting fairies, who have zero college, professional, or Major League experience, finding themselves coaching professional hitters on what they need to be doing, and how they need to be doing it? Listen, this may sound counter to what I just spent a few sarcastic paragraphs mocking. But listen closely…
As a coach you DO NOT need to have extensive experience to teach hitters to be effective in their movements. Just as long as you understand how to apply human movement principles that are validated by real science to hitting the ball. In other words, as long as you understand the rules of the human movement game, you can help hitters at all levels succeed, regardless of experience.
So what is happening?
From my understanding, these data-driven Econ-hitting fairies with extensive backgrounds in economics DO NOT understand the rules of the human movement game. Let me take you back to the future…
For those with your head in the sand the last two decades, there’s been a revolutionary baseball movement since 2001. Just after Michael Lewis wrote Moneyball. You may or may not have read the book, but may have seen the movie starring the always dreamy Bradley Pitt.
At the heart of the story is former General Manager of the Oakland Athletics, Billy Beane (played by Bradley Pitt). Beane reached out to Paul DePodesta, a Harvard alum, with a background in economics. And coincidentally had a knack for baseball statistics. DePodesta would soon become Beane’s first analytics department.
And it was here, Billy Beane transformed a low budget, bottom of the barrel, SEEMINGLY professional franchise known as the Oakland Athletics, into a real David and Goliath story. Beane and DePodesta used key player statistics to recruit. Stats that optimized scoring more runs, and as a result would win more games. Like how often a hitter gets on base – or On-base Percentage. And how often a hitter gets an extra base hit – known as Slugging Percentage. Think about it. How do you score more runs? Get more runners on base, and have hitters who can drive them in. Nowadays there are more advanced stats that measure run scoring value, but the point is this changed the game forever. For the better, and for the worst. I’ll get into why in the coming pages.
Furthermore…
This helped the baseball analytics powered A’s be highly competitive against top budget franchises. I apologize, but I’m going to spoil the ending … this was until other big market teams caught on. Oops! The cat was out of the bag. Yuge budget teams like Boston and New York were able to take the same system, but now pay BIG sums of money for the same undervalued players Oakland was getting at a steep discount. Yes, Oakland shot themselves in the foot. It wouldn’t be the last time. The jig was up. The A’s magic run was over. But not before Billy Beane and the A’s proved the system worked. Regardless of a franchise’s budget. Like a fairy’s wand, player valuation metrics transformed the game.
And it was a good thing at the time, because you had players and coaches still in the game or retired, that were helping teach the game through their personal experiences. They’re now considered “old school” coaches. Filling a gap on the coaching side of things that the Econ majors and analytics departments weren’t able to do. It was a healthy debate between old and new school methods. Friction and debate in a system are a good thing. But now this friction is like the political climate between Republicans and Democrats. Toxic.
This healthy balance of baseball analytics debate went MIA somewhere along the way. Like crabgrass in your lawn, metrics soon took over. Pushing many of the experienced baseball minds out of the game. Labeling them dinosaurs. Or maybe, the experienced minds couldn’t keep up. Or didn’t want to keep up. In my humble opinion, player valuation using metrics has its place. But it should not be the totality of scouting, recruiting and developing players. I’m not a Math-hater or numbers-denier. I love Math. Love Geometry, Economics, and Statistics. I did hate Algebra 2 though. My point is, data without context is not optimized. Data is a puzzle piece. NOT the whole thing.
Teaching hitters isn’t just about metrics. Doesn’t have to be completely data-driven. AND, teaching isn’t just about old school teaching methods. It’s a blend of both. Mutually inclusive. Not mutually exclusive. We can use data AND we can also use old school teaching methods to help hitters at all levels. We don’t have to be on one side or the other. You don’t have to be Tom OR Jerry. Bert OR Ernie. Han Solo OR Chewbacca. When it comes to hitting, the following will replace ‘Or’ with ‘And’.
Let’s make the Mathletes happy and discuss the…
Pros of a data-driven swing
Here are some pros to a data driven baseball analytics swing. Famed business management consultant, Peter Drucker once said,
“You can’t manage what you can’t measure.”
You business owners and managers understand this. You understand that you can optimize certain operations. You can optimize certain metrics in a business, it could be using Profit First in finances, it could be building Software as a Solution (SaaS) in technology, it could be optimizing sales funnels in marketing. Optimization is working on the right things, and then doing those things right.
How can numbers help hitters? Swing experiments. In online marketing, we can run what’s called split A/B test. Meaning, we can test whether a green button gets more clicks than a pink one over a period of time. Like online marketing, we can split A/B test the swing by running swing experiments.
One of the things we used to accomplish this, when we started HittingPerformanceLab.com back in 2013, was technology such as the Zepp swing app, a knob tech swing analyzer. Like BlastMotion and SwingTracker today. We can compare key swing metrics, whether it’s bat speed, attack angle, or time to impact and contrast two different swing movements. It’s the ultimate baseball analytics split A/B test for hitters!
Here are the 5 steps to applying the Scientific Method to running swing experiments…
We start off with a QUESTION: “Are loose hands fast hands to a hitter?” We can do a swing experiment using a BlastMotion or SwingTracker bat knob sensor. And we can test that. We can test it comparing apples to apples.
We then form a HYPOTHESIS on how we think the experiment will turn out: “I think loose hands ARE fast hands”. And then,
We go down the rabbit hole of RESEARCHING other studies that confirm and deny our hypothesis.
Then we COLLECT THE DATA from using the Zepp, BlastMotion, SwingTracker, or a PocketRadar for measuring ball exit speed.
For example in our ‘loose hands are fast hands’ swing experiment … we would take one hundred swings with loose hands. And one hundred swings doing the opposite. In this case, using what we call finger pressure. So the top hand, bottom three fingers squeezed tight, eight out of ten squeeze, from the moment the hitter picks up their front stride foot, to the swing follow through. Then we counterbalance those swings. This helps remove any warm-up or getting tired biases out of the experiment.
We break the two hundred swings into twenty five swing chunks, and layer them so that loose hand swings are symbolized with the letter ‘A’, and finger pressure swings are symbolized with the letter ‘B’. Remember, each letter represents one 25-swing chunk. The first 100 swings will be broken into the following sequence: ABBA. And the last 100 swings will be broken into the following reverse sequence: BAAB. This is how to do split A/B testing, from a hitting perspective.
After all 200 counterbalanced swings, we extract the averaged out data from the BlastMotion, SwingTracker, Zepp device, or PocketRadar. Then we can base our CONCLUSION on the averages. Which factor, loose hands or finger pressure swings contributed to better bat speed, hand speed, time to impact, attack angle, etc.? By the way, Finger Pressure won out in our own swing experiments.
Simply put, here’s the Scientific Method…
Question
Hypothesis
Research
Data
Conclusion
Essentially, we use the above process, take one hitting myth, and test it against its opposite. Don’t get me wrong, no swing experiment is perfect. Experiment findings are based on probability. Experiments are repeated by others, and the findings are either proven or proven false. Over time, this increases or decreases confidence in the findings. The bottom line is this, using the Scientific Method may not be perfect, but it’s one step in the right direction. It gives us a process and path towards the truth. Take of from Peter Drucker: “You can’t manage what you can’t measure.”
We satisfied the Mathletes – somewhat – talking about the Pros of a data-driven swing, especially when it comes to Moneyball. Billy Beane, all that stuff.
Now, let’s make the old school athletes happy and look at the…
'Add 40-Feet' To Batted Ball Distance
Swing Study reveals how tens of thousands of hitters are adding 40-feet to batted ball distance by using one simple strategy.
Click the button below to access the FREE video that's been downloaded over 30K times!!
Outside of applying the Scientific Method to optimizing the swing, here are the Cons to a baseball analytics data driven swing. Typically, in a data driven swing, not enough attention is given to the context of the numbers.
I always say, numbers don’t have brains. People do. Here’s the problem … take the example of our Econ-hitting fairy story. Knowing zero about hitting. Having virtually zero experience hitting. Teaching hitters based on hearsay. Basically guessing on connecting the dots. This presents quite a challenge. It would be like asking me to re-roof your house … I have a lot of skill sets, but that ain’t one of them! You’d be better off making YouTube your friend and doing it yourself!
In today’s game, these hitters are in the Big Leagues because their statistics work for ‘Launch Angle’ era Econ-scouts. On paper, the numbers work. Aaron Miles played 9-years in the Big Leagues, from 2003-2011. Played for almost half a dozen teams. Most notable, he played with Albert Pujols on the St. Louis Cardinals. He was a switch hitting middle infielder and third baseman. Standing in at 5-foot, 8-inches, 180-pounds. Beautiful .281/.320/.352 career average slash line (batting average/on-base percentage/slugging percentage). Note that he played when the baseball analytics ‘Launch Angle’ era was just getting warmed up. When there was a somewhat healthy balance of old and new school. That’s the context.
Let me set the scene…
I’ve had a few enjoyable phone conversations with Aaron Miles over the years. Great dude. Not afraid to challenge the status quo. He told me a pretty revealing story once. Which will say a lot about the hitting times we find ourselves in. I asked him what decision he made in the past that now – looking back – he sees was a mistake?
He was slumping one year, and was briefly demoted. Before the demotion, he knew he was a small-ball situational hitting guy being smaller, faster, and a switch hitter. But with the demotion, he didn’t have much to lose, so he decided to air out his swing. Again, this was the start of the ‘Launch Angle’ era. Interestingly, he began smashing more extra base hits. At one point, a coach came up to him saying something to the effect of, “C’mon Miles, you’re a role player, don’t swing beyond your role”.
Remember, at this time there was still a strong old school hitting mentality present in the game. So what did Miles do? What any rational, logical, smart Big Leaguer would do in that scenario … he got back to being a role playing hitter. You see, the respect for the “numbers community” wasn’t as high as it is now. So in Aaron’s case, old school hitting was more representative of the times.
Here’s the point…
Here’s how Aaron Miles answered the question of what decision he made in the past that now – looking back – he sees was a mistake… In this day and age of rewarding hitters that get on base more often and get more extra base hits … he expressed that he would have given the “air-it-out” swing more time. Maybe he could have added another year to his career. Maybe 2? 3? 4 maybe? Who knows! Give up some strikeouts. Hit more dingers and doubles. This formula seems to work out better for hitters in the Launch Angle era.
Let me be clear. This blog post isn’t about giving up a hundred strikeouts and fifty batting average points a season to hit for more power. What we believe is having your cake and eating it too! Power AND average. Mutually inclusive, NOT mutually exclusive. Just like Batman AND Robin!
Getting back to our baseball analytics Econ-hitting fairy friends taking numbers out of context…
They’re looking at a hitter’s high ground ball percentage – say 50 percent, while league average is 43 percent. And they’re telling that hitter to get the ball in the air. You may agree with this. And I can see where you’re coming from. But there’s a catch…those numbers don’t mean anything, if you don’t understand what mechanics are causing a higher than average ground-ball rate.
Let me give an example…
Christian Yelich in 2015 had a ground-ball rate of 62.5-percent! Remember league average is 43-percent. Then, that rate steadily dropped in the years that followed 56.5, 55.4, 51.8, and in 2019 he finally arrived at a league average 43.2-percent ground-ball rate. Do you know how many doubles he hit in those respective seasons, starting in 2015? 30, 38, 36, 34, and 29 doubles in 2019 – where he had about 100 less plate appearances than prior years. Dingers? Starting in 2015 with 7, 21, 18, 36, and 44 in 2019.
Yes, hitting less ground-balls will lead to more extra base hits. But what in a hitter’s mechanics (or timing) cause an above average ground-ball rate? Do you know? Off the top of your head, what can you point to mechanically? Believe me, if you tell a hitter to get the ball in the air without looking at mechanical ground-ball choke points, then you’ll most likely get an extreme uppercut. Not to mention, most young hitters will make unnatural compensations to get the ball in the air. This collapses consistency! Low batting average and high strikeouts will be the ultimate result. Believe me.
Baseball analytics numbers by themselves are dumb. Numbers don’t have brains, people do. So hitting coaches have to understand how mechanics translate into metrics. Back to our Econ-hitting fairy friends. That’s the problem. Not having the ability to translate metrics into mechanics. To optimize the numbers, we have to understand the context. The good news for our Econ-hitting fairy friends? This can be learned and applied in today’s ‘Launch Angle’ era. Regardless of playing level experience.
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How it’s bad (or good) to only track ball exit speed and launch angle in the batting cage
There are some hitting coaches that will say tracking ball exit speed and launch angles in the batting cage is really dumb, is REALLY not smart. And then there are those who do it all the time. And their hitters are successful versus doing nothing.
Look, I treat the batting cage as a Laboratory. It’s a place to experiment. To work out the kinks. To be free to make mistakes and learn. Use data to measure and manage swing mechanics. Logical coaches get this. Others? They’re just guessing.
Same polarized perspective about tee work. Some coaches don’t like hitting off batting tees. Because at the end of the day, the hitter has to translate what they’re doing mechanically to a LIVE pitch. Agreed. But when teaching something new, a batting tee has its place. It can also help coaches understand cause and effect in mechanics. How? By isolating the variable. If you can’t isolate the variable, you’re guessing. And guessing is an anti-optimization strategy. If you don’t know what’s causing what, then how do you know what works and what doesn’t?
Isolating the variable? Brilliant.org defines it:
“Isolating a variable means rearranging an algebraic equation so that a different variable is on its own. The goal is to choose a sequence of operations that will leave the variable of interest on one side and put all other terms on the other side of the equal sign.”
I know, rough definition when comparing against baseball analytics. Let me rephrase … in relation to hitting mechanics, it’s finding out what in the swing contributes to the majority of power… Hitting more line drives… Getting on-time more often… How would one go about isolating those mechanical variables? I can tell you it’s not hitting LIVE pitching. WHY? Because LIVE pitching is too random. Humans. Pitch speed. Pitch depth. Pitch height. Pitch type. Pitch distance. Pitch reaction time. All this can be controlled in a swing experiment off a tee.
I believe, there’s a time and place for the tee. I subscribe to the Goldilocks Golden Rule – not too hot, not too cold…I like my hitters using the tee just the right amount. The brain has to organize in a certain way. With LIVE pitching, there is a lot of data collection the hitter has to take in. Pitch recognition. Tracking. Timing. Learning a new mechanic also taxes the brain. High cognitive load.
Consider this…
What if I asked you to write your first and your last name in half the letters. In other words, what if I asked you to write every other letter of your name? So for me, JOEY MYERS, I would write it as J-E-M-E-S. Now, I’ve never done that before. So, if I was timing myself, the first five out of ten tries would be slow. The more I practice though, the faster I’d be writing half my name. Why? Because I’m writing it in half the letters!
But it takes a little time for my brain and body to connect and figure this out. To learn how to do it. Learn how to do something that I’m not used to doing. It is the same exact thing when learning something new mechanically. Keep this in mind when thinking about your seven, eight, nine year olds learning something they’re not comfortable doing. Hitting off the batting tee is an okay thing to do in the beginning. When something’s new.
Again, the batting tee shouldn’t be something you spend a lot of time using, but it is a proper regression-progression when compared to dry swings, soft toss, or LIVE toss. In connecting tee work to ball exit speeds and launch angles … they give us a unit of measure off the tee with a uniquely controlled environment. Apples to apples comparison.
Launch angles are a data point. A lot of these coaches don’t like the launch angle swing. Well, launch angle is a number. The launch angle is the angle of the ball coming off the bat. It’s hard for hitters to control it. However, hitters can control their barrel Attack Angle. The angle the barrel takes to the incoming pitch. Launch and Attack Angles don’t have to be the same. And most likely they aren’t going to be. But hitters can better control the latter, not so much the former.
What’s measurable is manageable. We can use swing experiments to do it. Hitting off the tee shouldn’t be something we hang our hat on, but it is something that gives us a data point, a standard data point that we can give baseball analytics context to. Not like analyzing metrics without looking at context. Remember numbers don’t have brains, people do. What are the causes of an above or below average fly ball, ground ball, or line drive percentage? Home run to fly-ball ratio? Higher percentage of pulling the ball or going the other way too much? What is the mechanical causation-correlation relationship making those metrics above or below average?
We’ll find out in upcoming blog posts…
We covered A LOT:
Story of Econ-hitting fairies in the Minor Leagues – having almost ZERO hitting experience and knowledge. What’s going on here?
Pros of a data-driven swing – what’s measurable is manageable. Using the Scientific Method: 1. Asking a question, 2. Forming a hypothesis, 3. Doing the research, 4. Collecting the data, and 5. Formulating a conclusion,
Cons of a data-driven swing – numbers by themselves are dumb. Numbers don’t have brains, people do. Hitting coaches have to understand how mechanics translate into metrics. What does a hitter with an above average ground-ball rate mean? How do you bring him or her to average or below average? And…
How it’s bad (or good) to track ball exit speed and launch angle in the batting cage – if you’re not collecting data and comparing with strategic swing changes, then you’re guessing. Tracking ball exit speeds, attack angles, and launch angles are part of data collection. And using a tee is essential when isolating the variable and teaching something new.
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https://hittingperformancelab.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/baseball-analytics-cabrera-launch-angle.jpg586600Joey Myershttps://hittingperformancelab.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/hitting-performance-labs_c90c0362088ef1d3d528f3078f4f8ac1-300x75.pngJoey Myers2022-03-30 06:42:552023-09-01 20:03:54Has New 2023 Baseball Analytics Changed Baseball OR Ruining Sports? How To Guide Translating Data Science Metrics Into Hitting Mechanics
Discover how to stop dropping the hands in baseball and softball batting. Learn our best fix a looping, late swing, and keep hands up hitting drill in 2023.
Get Rid Of A Hitter Dropping Their Hands At Stride Landing Once And For All Using RNT Hitting Softball Drills
Let me ask you a hitting softball drills question:
“Does your hitter (or hitters) swing and miss, foul back, or pop-up on pitches up in the zone abnormally often?”
The hitting softball drills video above may have the fix. One of the pro hitters I work with was told by his team’s hitting coach that he must be able to “catch-up” to pitches elevated in the zone. And I agree. Weak spots, or holes in the hitting zone, can and will be used by pitchers as a weapon. I tell my hitters to turn a pitcher’s weapon against them.
The challenge I find watching slow motion swing video, with some hitters, is there hands drop (towards the waist) at stride landing 2-4 frames from the back armpit line. Less than two frames and I generally don’t fix. The rule of thumb for my hitters is the hands MUST end up – height-wise – around the back armpit. Slightly above, in-line, or below is okay. Think about a boxer delivering a knockout punch. Watch the “line” Mike Tyson creates right before he delivers a knockout punch (uppercuts excluded)…
If a hitter’s hands end up too low, then they’ll consistently swing and miss, foul back, or popup pitches elevated in the strike zone. Learn how to turn a pitcher’s weapon against them with these hitting softball drills.
Click Here for another example of RNT in the stepping in the bucket drill.
If you don’t have them already, then here’s equipment you’ll need for this type of hitting softball drills:
Tribe 11pc Resistance Band Set – with Door Anchor, Handles, Ankle Straps – Stackable Up To 80lbs – For Resistance Training, Physical Therapy, Home Workouts, or the…
Please try this out and let me know how it works for your hitters in the Comments section below… (Thanks in advance!)
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https://hittingperformancelab.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/How-To-Stop-Dropping-Hands-Looping-Baseball-Softball-Swing.png423800Joey Myershttps://hittingperformancelab.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/hitting-performance-labs_c90c0362088ef1d3d528f3078f4f8ac1-300x75.pngJoey Myers2022-03-28 09:02:502023-09-16 05:22:38How To Stop Dropping Hands Baseball & Softball Batting | BEST 2023 Fix Looping And Late Swing, Keep Hands Up When Hitting Drills
Baseball Swing Trainer: ‘Swinging Down’ In ‘Launch Angle’ Era?
Should parents, coaches, and instructors be teaching the ‘launch angle’ swing to youth baseball and softball players in 2022? You’ll learn simple drill cues to fix bat path issues, bat drag, and what is an optimal launch angle?
Typical baseball swing trainer BEWARE!
I agree with ‘swing down’. Let that sink in for a bit. Some are pissed I just said that. But those who’ve followed me for some time are nodding their head in confirmation because when you know, you know.
Christian Yelich and Barry Bonds swing comparison. Photo courtesy: Jomboy Media YouTube channel
Because guess what? It depends. ‘Swing down’ shouldn’t be used as a baseball swing trainer blanket teach. The above Christian Yelich video says baseball swing trainer Barry Bonds taught him a drill that changed his career…
I have two things for you…
Jomboy Media VIDEO: “Christian Yelich says Barry Bonds taught him a drill that changed his career” (watching it will reveal its relevance to this post), and
Below is Chapter-2 of the new book I’m working on. It’s a longer post, but I think you’ll like it. Goes well with the Yelich-Bonds video above, like grass fed red meat and a fine red wine.
Thank you Grandpa Mike for sharing the baseball swing trainer video. You know who you are. Enjoy!
SCIENCE-BASED TRAINING:
Improve your hitting strategy dramatically by applying human movement principles.
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WHAT AN OLD SCHOOL SWING FEELS LIKE & THE PROS AND CONS?
In Chapter-2, we’ll look at what an old school swing feels like and the pros and cons. We’ll be discussing:
How can someone tell Mike Trout, Albert Pujols, or Alex Rodriguez what they say about hitting is wrong?
Pros to old school feel mechanics,
Cons to old school feel mechanics, and
So, how do we interweave brainless data and confusing real v. feel hitting cues?
How Can Someone tell Mike Trout, Albert Pujols, or Alex Rodriguez what they Say about Hitting is Wrong?
Now, some of you out there have seen the video of Alex Rodriguez demonstrating how he swung down. Maybe you saw the preseason interview of Mike Trout discussing how he gets on top of the ball.
Or how about Albert Pujols on the MLB Network revealed he swings knob down to the ball?
‘Swing down’. ‘Getting on top of the ball’. ‘Knob to the ball’. ‘Keep barrel above hands’ is another one. Nowadays, these are some of THE most despised baseball swing trainer hitting coaching cues on the market. I was one of them. “Was”. About 2-3 years ago. Now I have a different perspective and approach. These cues DO work. But it depends on the case. And if reading or hearing those words made your blood boil…you can change too, believe me. Here’s how…
First, let’s clear up and define “swinging down”. Well yeah, the hands do go down to the ball. And depending on how high or low the ball is, the hands will go down more or less. This is true. But coaches HATE these cues for a different reason. Here’s the thing… if you watch players like A-Rod, Mike Trout, and Albert Pujols physically demonstrate what swinging down means to them, you see them using a chopping motion. Yes. The barrel and hands travel down to the ball. But not ‘hands drop’. That’s different, and is a swing flaw we MUST fix. In the high level swing, we see the barrel go down before coming up.
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When swinging down is translated by the baseball swing trainer into a NEGATIVE attack angle. Meaning the barrel is going down towards the impact point. Is not coming up. And this is what hitting greats like Alex Rodriguez, Mike Trout, and Albert Pujols are demonstrating in interviews. And where the confusion starts. If you watch their actual swing on film, slow motion swing, what you’re going to see is a POSITIVE attack angle. Meaning, barrel elevating up to incoming ball descending down. Yes, even in Fastpitch Softball (more about this in Chapter-7). Barrel coming up to impact, positive. Barrel going down to impact, negative. We clear?
So if what these great hitters are saying and demonstrating isn’t what they’re actually doing, then what’s REALLY going on?
Well, here’s the thing … it’s the mysterious case of real versus feel. What’s really happening on video doesn’t square with what the high level hitter feels they’re doing. Two completely opposite things. Take Mike Trout. Let’s look at his real (9-year career average batted ball numbers before start of 2020 season):
Ground-ball rate: 36.8% (League average is 43%)
Fly-ball rate: 40.8% (League average is 37%)
Line drive rate: 22.4% (League average is 20%), and
Homerun to fly-ball ratio: 21.4% (League average is 9.5%).
Significantly below average ground-ball rate. Check. Slightly above average fly-ball rate. Check. Slightly above average line drive rate. Check. And well above average home-run to fly-ball ration. Checkmate! This proves his performance – the real – doesn’t jive with his feel of ‘getting on top of the ball’. I want you to go to YouTube, search “Mike Trout slow motion swing”, and watch…
His barrels goes down, then comes up to the ball. Up. Positive barrel attack angle. Not down. Not on top. Not a negative attack angle.
Before the baseball swing trainer gets upset I’m telling Mike Trout, “You know ‘nothin’!” Here’s the beautiful crazy of this whole thing. Coaches, understand this … the body is always one or two steps behind the brain. Thinking happens fast. There’s zero friction with thoughts. Nothing. It just goes, goes, goes, goes, goes. No heavy bones, muscle, organs, and fascia required to move before a thought can fire off!
The secret to unlocking the real v. feel mystery can be revealed through a psychology term called paradoxical intention…
Pros to Old School Feel Mechanics
We have to understand what Mike Trout is REALLY saying. Bring context to the numbers. Remember Chapter-1? Trout will say, “I’ll take 10 swings off the tee or during batting practice to feel like I’m getting on top of the ball”. You see, his natural tendency is to uppercut. An extreme uppercut because he uses a significant shoulder tilt to effectively feast on balls down in the zone. And this works well with pitchers targeting down in the zone, and away.
Although, this is different than the slight uppercut Ted Williams talked about in his book The Science Of Hitting. Williams talked about barrel meeting the plane of the pitch. Trout’s natural tendency runs counter to this. And what he tells himself, remember the body is one or two steps behind the brain, is to do the exact opposite of what his natural tendency is. He tells himself to get on top of the ball. And what’s the result? The barrel ends up somewhere in the middle of extreme uppercut and negative attack angle downswing. That’s what he’s trying to get for his real… to get to the middle.
The true old school baseball swing trainer hitting tragedy…
Some say hitters like Alex Rodriguez, Barry Bonds, Pujols, and Trout are – or were – fantastic at doing, but not very good at translating what they did into teaching. Take Barry Bonds. Who was the Florida Marlins hitting coach in 2016. Then they let him go. Former Marlins President David Samson said this,
“Bonds was worst hitting coach of my career.”
So why wasn’t Barry Bonds able to translate the way he hit to his prized pupils like Giancarlo Stanton? Bonds is the career Major League home run leader after all. Some say he can do, but he doesn’t know how he does what he did. I disagree these hitters aren’t good at teaching. Again it’s a translation issue.
Dr. Victor Frankl, Psychologist and survivor of four Nazi death camps, in his book Man’s Search For Meaning, calls this “paradoxical intention”. Hitters like Trout and Bonds use extreme physical cues to establish a consistent slight upward swing plane. This strategy is a “trick” played on the body, which is a step or two behind. Paradoxical intention. Take any hitter with an extreme uppercut, tell them to chop down (negative Attack Angle “feel” cue), and their barrel path ends up in a slight uppercut. Just like Ted Williams said – like magic! Feel cues are fantastic for making simple swing adjustments.
If you’re coaching youth hitters, let’s get into that world for a moment…
A lot, and I mean A LOT of youth players ages 7 to 12 years old uppercut. Extreme uppercuts. Casting. Loooong swings. They don’t need to be taught this! This is typical, before they’ve built enough strength in their bodies. In their core. In the dynamic nature of the spinal engine. They tend to cast the barrel out. Meaning, the barrel casts away from the body, leaving the back shoulder too early. This causes a long swing. Thanks to gravitational forces, centripetal and centrifugal forces*. As they swing, they end up underneath the ball. On inside pitches, they end up getting jammed a lot. And swing under a lot of pitches up in the zone. A LOT.
(*Centripetal Force is a center “seeking” force. Like twirling a rock on a string. The rock exerts force back to the two fingers holding the string. Centrifugal Force is a center “fleeing” force. Letting go of the twirling rock on a swing, causes the rock to shoot off in a tangent direction away from the original circle.)
There are other factors causing an extreme uppercut, like hands drop or constant deep barrel dumping. But with youth hitters, the rules of Physics are bigger offenders. Here’s the good news … swing an overloaded bat. Overloaded bats help young hitters build strength to do that. Regardless of mechanics. More on that protocol later in the book.
Those are the pros of an old school feel mechanics. Now, let’s look at the cons…
Cons to Old School Feel Mechanics
These are what the baseball swing trainer “metrics people” will typically bring up. You’re so out of touch. No numbers to support your gut feelings? What does that mean? How can I trust your “gut”? Because you played or coached 20 years in the Big Leagues? That’s not good enough!! What’s measurable is manageable. If you can’t use numbers to support your gut, then I’m not listening. This is a common conversation you’ve probably seen, heard, or participated in.
The old school coaching cues we just discussed in the pros to old school swing section can also be included in that gut conversation. It’s bad if the old school cues are used as a default. In a one size fits all way. For example, Johnny’s coach sees Pujols demonstrate a chopping down swing on MLB Network’s Diamond Demos. That coach goes to Johnny’s 10 year old team practice on Monday evening, and tells every one of his hitters to swing like Pujols does. Chop, chop, chop. And he tells them with the conviction, vigor, and energy of a Sunday Pastor, that they can hit like Pujols. How can you argue with Senor Alberto? From his lips to coach’s ears out of coaches mouth to kids’ ears. If Albert Pujols said it and it worked for him, then we MUST take the message literally! He is Prince Albert for jimminies sake!
Here’s the problem with that. Remember when I mentioned the translation issue? By feeding the ‘swing down’ or ‘chop down’ mantras as a default hitting strategy to every 10 year old on your team, I’m sorry to say it, but you will lose. Let me illustrate with a thought experiment…
Apply the “one-third rule” to your team. In this example, assume a third of your hitters pop the ball up a majority of the time. Another third of hitters hit line drives a majority of the time. And the remaining third are majority ground-ball hitters. So, what if you tell the whole team to swing down or get on top of the ball? A blanket statement to all. Default old school baseball swing trainer hitting cue. What do you think is going to happen?
Based on what was discussed with Dr. Victor Frankl’s paradoxical intention – remember extreme uppercut, tell them to ‘get on top’, and they end up in the middle? Slight uppercut. Inline with incoming pitch. Here’s what will happen to our team if we tell all to chop down … a third of the team that used to pop the ball up a majority of the time, will hit more line drives. Those middle third hitting line drives a majority of the time, are going to hit more ground-balls. And the ground-ball a majority of the time group, are going to hit even more worm burner ground-balls. So how did the thought experiment turn out with a blanket statement old school hitting cue?
The only group on the team that benefits are the beginning fly ball hitters. The ones hitting fly-balls a majority of the time. Those are the only ones you’ll see a significant difference, for the better. Look ground-balls are great. Especially hard ones when the defense can’t play catch. But what happens when they can play catch? When would your team come across a team that can play catch? That’s right! In all-stars. In playoff and championship games. Not good if you just converted line drive hitters into ground-ball hitters. And ground-ballers into hitting more worm burners. Read our infamous Ground-ball Rant post.
Now, let’s cook up a different scenario. A more simple yet elegant solution. Instead of giving a blanket statement, a blanket swing down, chop down to the whole team. But instead, I let the line drive hitters do their thing. Just keep doing what you’re doing. I took the fly ball hitter and told them to swing down, chop down. And I instructed the ground-ballers to hit the ball in the air. Like pop the ball up instruction. How do you think that baseball swing trainer thought experiment would go?
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If I did that…now my pop-fliers AND ground-ballers are both hitting more line drives. Remember Victor Frankl’s Man’s Search For Meaning paradoxical intention? Overall, my whole team is hitting more line drives. Now my line drivers aren’t lonely. They have more competition to deal with. Competition makes everyone better. Hungrier. Especially when they’re experiencing success. Does that make sense?
The cons of an old school swing are when we apply a blanket statement shared by one of the best hitters on the planet. Don’t do that. Bad coach. You DO NOT pass go, and you DO NOT collect $200.
One swing fits all cues are a bad. And you wouldn’t know this without data to measure and optimize. Gut feelings and hunches are like throwing darts in the dark. It’s like shooting an arrow and calling whatever you hit – after the fact. It’s guessing. If you aren’t collecting numbers using a PocketRadar, Rhapsodo, HitTrax, BlastMotion, or SwingTracker, then you’re flying blind. You aren’t going to know. And those hunches will just be hunches.
Same goes for blindly following what a Hall of Famer or future Hall of Famer says or said about hitting. Become a scientist. Test, test, test. Blindly following a leader without question, will make you nothing more than a sheep. Question, question, question. Even question me and EVERYTHING in this book.
So far in Chapter-2, we talked about:
How can someone tell Mike Trout, Albert Pujols, or Alex Rodriguez what they say about hitting is wrong?
Pros to old school feel mechanics, and
Cons to old school feel mechanics…
We talked about how what’s real and what’s feel are two totally different things. The scenery can be very confusing. The waters choppy. How does a coach cut through the clutter and calm the waters? The simple truth to make hitting easier – it’s not easy, but we can make it easier – is called paradoxical intention. Doing the exact opposite of what just happened to get the middle. Extreme swing up? Tell them to swing down – hit a chopper. Extreme swing down? Tell them to swing up – hit a pop-fly. There’s more to it of course, and we’ll get into it more later. Let’s move on to…
How do we Interweave Brainless Data and Confusing Hitting Cues?
This DOES NOT cause that, and that DOES NOT cause this. Question: Coincidentally, if I wear a green shirt and it rains, then is it reasonable to think I can make it rain by wearing a green shirt? This is the exact dilemma many instructors find themselves in with what they teach.
Some teach ONLY using data. Some teach ONLY using old school hitting cues. Some claim to base their teachings on millions of hours watching ONLY the best hitters. Some validate Science with their hitting theories (proudly saying their system can’t be found in Science!!). And others validate their hitting philosophy with Science, which is what we do. Who’s right? Who’s wrong? Can we use a mix? And if so, how do we know if we’re on the right track?
Are you throwing dynamite in the air and expecting rain?
I want to share a true story from the book Dust Bowl: An Illustrated Historyby Ken Burns and Dayton Duncan. The story will illuminate how to filter the hitting information available today. Interestingly…
Right before the Great Depression hit the Oklahoma panhandle, rain was plentiful. This caused Doctors and Lawyers to quit their practices and join the ranks of farmers to buy land and plant crops that were being subsidized by the US government. In other words, the gold-in-them-hills was harvesting and selling wheat and other bumper crops of the era.
Millions of acres of 6-foot high beautiful Buffalo blue grass were plowed under to make room for crops. Fast forward to the beginning of the Great Depression, the rain dried up, and so did the crops. Unbeknownst to the “new” farmers who moved to the area, typically rain was sparse in the location, and by coincidence, they had just experienced a rare wet 5-10 year period.
Now there’s NO rain. And you know the 6-foot high beautiful Buffalo blue grass they cut down? Well, it used to hold the soil down despite seasonal 60 to 70 mile-per-hour wind gusts. So NO rain coming. NO crops growing. Super high winds are eroding dry barren soil and tossing it up in the air. Grazing cattle have nothing to eat but tumbleweeds brought over by Russians (people often sprinkled salt to eat them as well). The livestock soon get sick and die. The drought is fatal for the majority who stay, others move west. This is where we get John Steinbeck’s book “Dust Bowl”.
Stick with me, because here comes the lesson…
The farmers who stayed behind were so desperate for rain, they hired self proclaimed rain experts to “create” rain, literally out of thin air. The belief at the time was that an explosion in the air could bring clouds, and with clouds, rain would fall from the sky. In plenty. So what did these self proclaimed rain experts do? What any self proclaimed rain expert would do!! They sold the idea that if they lit a stick of dynamite, timed the throw just right, they could get a perfectly timed explosion that would bring rain-a-plenty.
…And as luck would find it, the “racket” seemed to work a couple times. This only fed the foolishness we all see now – hindsight is 20/20. Yes, this wasn’t a proud time in American history. You have to understand, people back then were DESPERATE. Their hope blinded them to the MANY times throwing dynamite in the air didn’t work. People lost limbs, fingers, etc. from timing the throw wrong. Head scratcher I know.
When it comes to baseball swing trainer, we have to be careful of the causation-correlation relationship. Is studying video and teaching only what the “best” hitters are doing enough? I would argue it is not. How do you know what you’re looking at, if you don’t know what you’re looking for? We see Pujols demonstrating a negative attack angle swing on MLB Network. But then we see him NOT do that in real-time. We bring that same Pujols gold nugget to Johnny’s team, blanket teach it, and the end result looks nothing like what we see Pujols do during competition. This DOES NOT cause that, and that DOES NOT cause this.
I’m going to reveal a secret about why coaches are terrible at the causation-correlation relationship. Like shooting a random arrow and calling whatever is hit. Here’s a quote summing it up from Scott Adams, in his book Loserthink: How Untrained Brains Are Ruining America:
“There are three important things to know about human beings in order to understand why we do the things we do. [1] Humans use pattern recognition to understand their world. [2] Humans are very bad at pattern recognition. [3] And they don’t know it.”
So how do we escape this seemingly inescapable prison of baseball swing trainer misdiagnosis? After reading thus far, you know it. Be less subjective and more objective. KeyDifferences.com says this about subjective versus objective:
“Subjective means something which does not show the clear picture or it is just a person’s outlook or expression of opinion. A subjective statement relies on assumptions, beliefs, opinions and influenced by emotions and personal feelings. An objective statement is based on facts and observations.”
Use the Scientific Method. Develop a hitting Question…make a predictive Hypothesis…do the Research…collect the Data…form a Conclusion. Swing experimentation. We apply human movement principles validated by REAL Science to hitting a ball. Scientific principles pulled from:
Physics,
Engineering,
Biomechanics, and
Body work.
How do we figure out if this DOES cause that? Or if that DOES cause this? Not by wearing a green shirt! To know what you’re looking at, you have to know what you’re looking for. DO NOT validate Science through your hitting philosophy. DO validate your hitting philosophy through Science. Set a higher standard for your hitters. It’s okay – watch your millions of hours of video…employ those expensive measuring gadgets…and flaunt those old school hitting cues.
But above ALL of that … understand what the rules to human movements are FIRST. Once you know that, all other domino’s fall where they’re supposed to. In conclusion of Chapter-2, we looked at what an old school swing feels like and the pros and cons. We discussed:
How can someone tell Mike Trout, Albert Pujols, or Alex Rodriguez what they say about hitting is wrong?
Pros to old school feel mechanics,
Cons to old school feel mechanics, and
So, how do we interweave brainless data and confusing real v. feel hitting cues?
In Chapter-3, we’ll answer the question of what leads to hitting more predictable line drives and less strikeouts. Where we’ll dive into:
What does “predictable” mean and why does probability matter? And,
Difference between ‘Launch Angle’ and ‘Attack Angle’…
Onward…
———-
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https://hittingperformancelab.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/swing-down-launch-angle-era-e1590641467153.png236500Joey Myershttps://hittingperformancelab.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/hitting-performance-labs_c90c0362088ef1d3d528f3078f4f8ac1-300x75.pngJoey Myers2022-03-28 09:01:582022-03-29 18:14:09Teach ‘Launch Angle’ Youth Baseball & Softball Swing In 2022? How To Fix Bat Path, Drag, Training Drills, & What Is Optimal?
Backspin Bat Tee Co-Founder Interview: If One Of The Best, Mike Trout, Is Giving Up An Average 20-mph Of Ball Exit Speed, How Much Do Mere Mortals Give Up Doing The Same Thing?
Here are the Backspin bat tee co-founder interview with Taylor Gardner topics that we discussed:
What do bat tee adjustments mean to you when it comes to talking to your hitters?
True or False: Hitters MUST straighten their front leg to be effective…
What if hitters used a more precision approach like golfers when operating between 90-degrees?
Instead of writing off the arm bar as it doesn’t work, why not ask how can it work?
Is there ever a time when ‘swing down’ or ‘barrel above the hands’ bat tee cues can work?
If one of the best, Mike Trout, is giving up 20-mph of ball exit speed, how much do mere mortals give up doing the same thing?
Where can people find more about you Backspin bat tee guys?
The following is the bat tee transcription of the video above. This is a sneak peak at the expert interviews we’ll be including in Volume-2 of the Swing Smarter book series. Enjoy!
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Grab two chapters of our NEW Amazon book FREE...
"Swing Smarter: Science Based Hitting Training Built To Understand How, Why, & Reasoning Behind It"
Oh, there’s the baby. You got that mixed up? I don’t think that’s supposed to go in your mouth.
Taylor Gardner 00:21
Probably should.
Joey Myers 00:24
Look at you.
Taylor Gardner 00:26
Yeah.
Joey Myers 00:27
Causing your parents so much so many sleepless nights.
Taylor Gardner 00:30
Yeah, momma needed a shower time and dad had an interview here.
Joey Myers 00:38
Double interview.
Taylor Gardner 00:40
Yeah. Oh my
Joey Myers 00:45
Look at that, first time I think we’ve done a zoom interview.
Taylor Gardner 00:49
Oh it has been working out, better adjust my camera?
Joey Myers 00:55
No, I think you’re good. What do you need to adjust?
Taylor Gardner 00:57
All I was going to bring it down a little bit. I think I always fall down.
Joey Myers 01:01
Yeah, I think you’re good. Okay. Are you ready? Let me do the official bat tee start. Hello and welcome to Swing Smarter Monthly Newsletter. This is your host Joey Myers from HittingPerformanceLab.com and probably for the half a dozenth interview. I have Taylor Gardner here from Backspin Bat Tee. Welcome to the show. Taylor looks like you brought a little friend.
Taylor Gardner 01:26
That’s right. Yes. Yeah. She has been influenced by any good or bad and…
Joey Myers 01:37
there. There we go. You froze for a little bit. Say it again? Say No. So, she’s been influenced by what?
Taylor Gardner 01:46
I said. No, we got we got a fresh template here. She hasn’t had any good or bad instruction to start working with this.
Joey Myers 01:54
Yeah, yeah. Tie the right arm behind your back and… is your brother? Is he lefty? Or is he righty?
Taylor Gardner 02:03
He’s a switch hitter. You can do both.
Joey Myers 02:05
He does both. But what about throwing? Is he a righty?
Taylor Gardner 02:07
He’s righty.
Joey Myers 02:09
Okay, cool. Well, hey, I wanted to get you on the on the other side of the screen here and wanted to talk about making bat tee adjustments. So that we could go into the hitting side we could go into the strategy side we can go into any different things. So, what do adjustments mean to you when it comes to talking to your hitters?
What do bat tee adjustments mean to you when it comes to talking to your hitters?
Taylor Gardner 02:30
The adjustment is, must be understood and adjustment is something if a hitter is already attempting to be on time, it’s really hard to make adjustments if you’re not in the time window to start with. If you’re going up there to hit and you’re just purely reacting your adjustments are also reacting maybe even twice as long or twice as late as they should be.
Taylor Gardner 02:56
Within the understanding that people were syncing up release point we have the timing window of the pitch coming in. Maybe we’re sitting on fastball and all sudden we a pitcher throws a changeup, and whether you recognize the spin or the speed or the trajectory angle, whether an off-speed pitch, what do you do?
Taylor Gardner 03:15
Well, if your plan was there to help you your approach is there to help you not hurt you, so within your plan or approach if you’re on time for fastball, and oh no it’s an off-speed pitch. What do you do? Well, easy answer is, you don’t stop your swing. I know we get told a lot of wait, let that curveball get a lot deeper. Now we’re talking about changing depths and it’s really hard to change depths of timing on the fly. So as instead of being reactive to making your adjustment proactive and making your adjustment one thing that my baby down actually brought a bat here to show you…
Joey Myers 03:55
Use the baby as a bat…how cute she is.
Taylor Gardner 04:02
One thing that we see a lot with hitters. He was left-handed here. I do apologize. Is they’re sideways, they’re pretty lined up with a pitcher in some fashion bat tee stance, and then we start to ride and stride as they start to witness that. Okay, this ball isn’t a perfect fastball down the middle. What do I do? Well, we see them not only continue to take their head and posture to the ball, but you see a lot of hitters start turn in and sit with the ball.
Taylor Gardner 04:33
As opposed to going uh oh, I’m a little early, let me pull out and then have to release my arms and hands to hopefully start to see hitters actually sit with that ball. Then because, you sit, any movement takes time. And if the plane is correct, you’re on time for the pitchers fastest pitch and then if you’re making an adjustment is to bite. This is where a lot of young hitters especially they don’t do a good job of buying time.
Taylor Gardner 05:00
They end up staying on their backside and opening up too soon and all they have left is like it with their own risk. And yeah, you can hit a ball and do that, and you probably get on base and feel good about yourself. But the faster you know that speed starts to go up and level and the more drastic change of off speed, you get a 90 mile an hour fastball and 80-mph changeup. That’s a little different than facing a 75 mile an hour fastball and 70 mile change-up.
Taylor Gardner 05:27
As a pitcher supposed to extend those timelines, adjustments and variables, the hitters have to as well. The ability to be ready for the fastest pitch and also be able to buy time while staying in a good posture position on the ball is something that we see really good hitters do and you know, quite frankly, amateur hitters don’t do as well. Oh, sure at some level. Yeah, won’t be a good fastball hitter. Every great hitter is known to be a great fastball hitter.
Taylor Gardner 05:55
If you’re looking off speed looking for that, that slow curveball every fast ball is going to beat you. On the timeline you got to be prepared for the pitches, pitchers fastest pitch as the fastest timeline. Therefore, your plan is there to help. Yeah, he’s going to be perfect every time, well of course not, it’s baseball. It’s tough. But at least the plan was in place to help you be on time for fastball and buy time for off speed.
Taylor Gardner 06:23
For example, this last weekend, my nephew, faced his first knuckleballer. 13 years old didn’t know this pitcher had a knuckleball it wasn’t his main pitch, so you know first at bat I don’t know hit a fastball for double, second a bat gets a strike or two on him a ball or two and then all the sudden, whack! He hits a single, steals second base eventually gets to third base and the coach at third goes, “good job Maverick you know you really sat well in your legs on that change up”, he goes “wasn’t a changeup coach, it was knuckleball”. He goes, “Oh, when did you realize it was a knuckleball?” “After I hit it!”
Taylor Gardner 06:59
It reminded me that he took a good plan to the plate, ready for fastball he happened to adjust instinctively to this crazy knuckleball, but it was more about controlling this contact depth. I’m not quitting on my swing. Did he sit more in his legs, sure. Did he have a locked out-front leg? No. But he found a way to keep his spinal engine and posture on the ball. By the time he pulled the trigger. Sure, the ball got a little deeper, he barreled it up, he got a good hit out of it. At the end of the day, it didn’t fool him, this random pitch that he really has never seen, didn’t make him react and freeze.
Taylor Gardner 07:36
It didn’t make him react it to slow down and touch it, his reaction was to stay on the ball and give it a chance. And it sounds easy to do until you start seeing a pitch come flying at your body. For us older coaches that aren’t playing anymore, I think sometimes we forget that. There’s a little fear involved. And so, a good plan leads to good adjustments. And sometimes knowing how to get over that fear or filter out your situation really helps that plan starts to stick together better.
Taylor Gardner 07:57
And therefore, those bat tee adjustments really become valuable. As far as other types of adjustments. And that was one type of sitting in your legs, other types of adjustments. We’ve seen Mike Trout sit in his legs; we’ve also seen him bend over a little more at his waist a little side tilt. That’s another way of buying time. Adjustments to me, in our world is a place to buy time, every movement takes time. But unless you’re ready to line your posture up for the ball on time to begin with, adjustments are just going to slow you down. You’ve got to make sure those adjustments are there to help you not hurt you.
Joey Myers 08:48
Well, you said a couple bat tee things that would blow a couple people’s minds they were listening to this… number one is sitting on your backside and swinging from that position number one, and number two, that you don’t have to straighten out your front leg that you can keep that bent. And I love that and that’s something that I’ve learned from you and your brother and Matty, Matty Nokes that the legs really set direction like the lower half basically sets directional force, it does contribute to some of the power.
Joey Myers 09:16
And we’ve learned discussions on that over the last couple of years saying you know, probably between 20 and 30%, it probably contributes to the power of the overall power thing. But the idea that you can use your knees bending your knees at front knee to adjust to pitch height like those are bat tee adjustments that we can make that if you’re from a train of thought that says you have to straighten it you have to brace that leg out, right, I mean that’s really not… We’re trying to like you said buy time.
True or False: Hitters MUST straighten their front leg to be effective
Taylor Gardner 09:46
Right. Speaking while the bracing the front leg, the front leg can obviously we can see it YouTube it, Google it. Now of course you can hit with a straight front leg and even sitting in your legs may still turn out to be a brace straightening front leg, you still bend your knee and still walk and brace into that front knee.
Taylor Gardner 10:06
But I think a lot of times as coaches and instructors that usually come to… an issue that I’ve seen come around is their teaching to push the leg straight, as opposed to letting the hip pull the leg straight. Pitchers do a really good job of this, they don’t just land in their front leg and then push straight up. Is their vertical ground force? Of course, there is.
Taylor Gardner 10:29
Now in hitting though, there may be little more of that vertical into horizontal ground force, it sounds funny to say, but you’re not just going to push up away from the ball every time. Sure, could you get away with it, of course, and there’s nothing wrong if you are on time and you get the barrel to it, great job. But like you like to say Joey, if it happens too much to ignore, I’ll just start paying attention.
Joey Myers 10:52
Yeah, and on that note, that was the one big bat tee thing that I pulled from you, we’ve been friends for probably over 6, 7, 8 years now, was that idea of staying sideways and keeping that back foot from completely turning over. Like a lot of coaches will say pivot that back foot, pivot that back foot, and meaning, that back heel will turn towards home plate. And it’ll continue to keep rotating. And so, I think we’ve developed almost a generation or two of hitters that are over rotating the lower half.
Joey Myers 11:23
And you say, using Matt Nokes’s lingo is stay sideways, stay sideways, I think is a great one. And to your point, or to our point that it happens too much to ignore, and you can’t just write it off. Some of our buddies in the past have said well, that hitter can do that because he XYZ that hitter can do that because it’s… no it happens if you take the top 100 hitters, 50 hitters, you’ll see half of them stay sideways and maybe the other half, get to this neutral with it. So that happens a little bit too often to be ignored.
Taylor Gardner 11:57
For anyone that’s listening, if you’ve ever played golf and if you haven’t fine taken a baseball bat take it slow, practice golf swing, go YouTube, Rory McElroy, Tiger Woods, anyone you want. Golfers have figured out how to stay sideways with their back foot. Now, their balls on the ground and it’s generally between them. Like ball being on a bat tee for hitters. They’re more allowed to buy but positions of contact with golf. However, you’re going to see baseball players do it too. But since the contact point in baseball can be further out front. Sure, you’re going to see that that back foot rotates a little more before contact. I get that told a lot. “Well, look at this hitter.”
Taylor Gardner 12:33
Yes, but look what happened the first 80% of his swing before contact, he was still sideways, he was still… now was he turning his shoulders, was he loading his core, the spiral engine. Sure, but the back foot was still sideways to hit, the back foot ends up becoming a bit of a rudder. I won’t even take that too literal. But you wouldn’t start with your back foot facing the catcher, you wouldn’t face with your back foot facing the pitcher. There’s a reason, it’s a natural position for the body.
Taylor Gardner 13:05
The ball is thrown in front of us and quite honestly, ball comes in and it is in front and to the side of us. If you’ve ever swung an axe, it makes sense to shift your weight and leverage up. That’s why we want to have a little more shift, not only for taking your head to the ball and be able to judge depth before moving very good and feeling your depth and putting a nice sense to it.
Taylor Gardner 13:34
But at the same time spinning against my back foot. Step on my dog… [laughs] spinning too soon. Now the ball is essentially to the side and behind us. Not that you can’t hit from here we opened up too soon. My swing’s wanting to go this way, I crossed my face this way, we want to cross our face into contact with the ball. Again, golfers understand this and their balls in front of them. They want to cross the face you don’t want to spin out and then cross their face too late that ends up turning into a slice and anyone who has played golf, probably vouch for that, my goodness I’m spinning off the ball. balls on never fixed.
Joey Myers 14:19
Well, and what I love the golf analogy is because in golf, you have a ridiculously small margin for error, you have we’re talking in hundreds of yards, not hundreds of feet and your little ball that’s got to get hit by this clubface and then the square center center contact with the clubface in the ball the straighter the ball is going to go. You can take that clubface and slightly like a couple of millimeters you can slightly pull it in like you’re going to hook it or slightly away like you’re going to slice it and those little, teeny millimeters by the end of that 200-yard journey is going to be way pull or slice.
Joey Myers 14:55
What I always tell my hitters, I say when we’re teaching this concept of staying sideways and keeping that back foot from over rotating is, we have to play almost like a golfer, where a golfer’s looking at one shot to the pin, I call it one degree of fair territory. And outside of that 359 degrees of foul territory, because in golf, the objective is the least number of strokes to get it in the hole. In baseball, of course, we have 90 degrees to play with, but we want to act like we’re doing like golf, we want to act like there is a smaller margin, and we have to operate within that smaller bat tee margin, right?
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What if hitters used a more precision bat tee approach like golfers when operating between 90-degrees?
Taylor Gardner 15:29
Along those lines, that it’s incredible you say that because the whole outside pitches, let it get deep, inside pitchers you’re magically allowed to pull for some reason, we’re talking about different depths there. Where in golf, obviously, the ball’s not moving, but to their benefit, they’re more precise, they have time to get their stance set up, time to adjust their face angle. So yes, maybe we don’t have that luxury in baseball, but we do have the luxury of knowing our contact depth.
Taylor Gardner 15:58
Do I like hitting the ball more? You know, some hitters like hitting the ball more off their front hip, some even further out front, some like hitting it a little deeper, more or middle of the other ball, whatever it is that you are super comfortable. That’s your decision. That’s what you’re going to battle with the best. And, again, based on your timeline. I have a lot of young hitters, and we constantly have to work on reminding them. Where is your preferred contact?
Taylor Gardner 16:29
And not to make them look like robots, but you’ll see them when uh, I don’t know, maybe like right there or up here. It’s like, Oh, you got to know, if you don’t know, you’re guessing, like your close, good job of being on time. We want to be on time with our contact point. This is a lot more precise. And as you know, aim small miss small, it’s may not always show up in baseball, maybe you had a day where you didn’t hit well. But you know what my plan was good. My adjustments were sound. And maybe I was just a little early or tad late, whatever that may be over under the ball.
Taylor Gardner 17:06
But you can sleep well at night knowing, man I had it at 99% today. And you don’t realize how much you haven’t figured out. You start thinking about more precision, besides movements. And then suddenly you go out three years ago, I was going to battle with a 50%. efficiency. That shocks a lot of hitters and I really do think a lot of good college players get to pro ball and maybe it doesn’t pan out for whatever reason.
Taylor Gardner 17:32
I think a lot of them whether they can say it or not verbiage that happens to a lot of if they get exposed, we get told at every level of baseball, you better swing faster Jerry, you better figure out how to get that faster pitching, you better, have quicker hands, whatever. Of course, we must make those adjustments because we’re being exposed. What if we got ahead of that being exposed?
Taylor Gardner 17:56
I don’t know if you saw the video that I posted on the baseball Illuminati page. I was actually crow hopping of doing run and guns, a nine-year-old ballplayer shuffle stepping out 25 feet in front of them throwing the ball 60-mph our reaction time stupid fast. So never seen anything that fast in their lives. As far as timing wise. And you know what he did? It took him a bit. He filtered it out. He figured out when to go when to shift, how to track the ball.
Taylor Gardner 18:26
And yeah, that ball was getting to him quicker than any pitch he’s ever going to see in baseball. And he started barreling balls up. Our brain’s a supercomputer y’all know that problem is if that supercomputer is putting in the wrong formula, it’s still going to, there’s still going to be a glitch. You still have to help it out.
Joey Myers 18:44
Shoot, I’d even go another step with the wrong formula and just saying that it’s becoming impossible, or you hear that from coaches? Well, that’s impossible, that’s not going to happen, or that’s not reality, or it’s not going to happen. And instead of saying that something’s not possible, why not ask why? or How can it be possible, right? We’ve talked about the front arm shape and trying to get that thing extended out. Whereas everybody in their mother seems to teach this bent front arm, right.
Joey Myers 19:13
The question that I always get when I put that post out there, people will go well, you know, I’ve tried to test it out and beer league softball and works there, but it doesn’t work in the big leagues and whatnot. And if you go way back, Joe DiMaggio and Hank Aaron, Ted Williams, Babe Ruth, all those guys locked out. So instead of saying, oh, that doesn’t work, today’s pitchers throw too hard and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Why not ask how can we make that work? Yes. How does that work? Right?
Instead of writing off the arm bar as it doesn’t work, why not ask how can it work?
Taylor Gardner 19:42
What if we made 90 miles an hour feel slower? Nothing’s any easier to hit. But what if? What if it wasn’t impossible. And clearly, it’s not, people do it every day. It’s not impossible. I’d like to say maybe the way we’re rationalizing it and maybe even practicing. Maybe we’re not doing our own job as a baseball coach, making, maybe it’s 75 miles. Now, if you’re struggling, maybe that’s what it is, whatever it is get ahead of that curve, not that you’re going to just start jacking home runs. But don’t be late. There’s no excuse for being late. There’s no excuse for not filtering out and understanding your environment.
Taylor Gardner 20:19
Maybe you don’t get to face a live picture every day or practice, that’s fair. I’m sure you have your work cut out for ya. But there’s no reason to get your doors blown off, when you have all of the potential to be as early as you want. Once you’re late, once the ball gets behind your timeline, and it gets behind your back. Pitcher starts in front of us. We as hitters, let ourselves be late. Maybe because we’re trying to do some crazy swing, like, oh, let it get deep and snap it or something, I don’t know.
Taylor Gardner 20:50
But whatever it may be, again, kind of back to the approach and those adjustments. Got to clean that up. And maybe you got to study more time. Maybe you got to study more spinal engine springy fascia and figure out where to get your running position. To your arm bar point… I think a lot of… uh oh, we have a wandering baby…
Joey Myers 21:13
Wait till she starts walking…
Taylor Gardner 21:15
I know I can’t wait! I understand folding your levers and engaging muscles, getting correct shapes. That makes sense. But when you see arm bar, and it starts to walk out, or to do slow motion. Yeah, looks funky in slow motion to arm bar. When you engage the body and it starts out, it starts to feel a little more natural golfers do the same thing. Luckily for us that in golf, you get to start with it extended and just connected to your body from there.
Taylor Gardner 21:55
But this bat is heavy, I completely understand why people want to hold it close to their body, it is rational. And it’s still close to the body. It’s not like we’re arm barring out here. If you’re still arm barring across our core, this bat is behind you, want lag and you want leverage, leverage, and just loose and lever sometimes, your hands are so close to your body. And even so close this way to the middle of your body. By the time you do a swing, yeah, you’re getting the barrel off your foot. And it may be a strong position depending upon position.
Taylor Gardner 22:34
But if I never got the benefit of the lag, and a clearing, and time to speed up the bat, it takes time to speed up the bat. This is not an instantaneous thing. I know this swing only takes like point two seconds; I get it. That’s slow through the world of everything happening, there is plenty of time and so that hand, grips on the bat. For most people they’re bottom hand is the weaker hand. Not doing anything left-handed if I have to. But you want your dominant arm to do his job.
Taylor Gardner 23:09
Not that you have to do it all with a dominant arm. But you certainly don’t want your weaker arm to be your dominant arm. Now, how do you get them in position? Well, as you get a swing, if it happens to lock out, you’re getting the benefit of lag and leverage. How is that wrong? If I understand timing, if I understand off your positions and swing plane. And armbar is nothing in the scheme of arguments. I’m linked into the lever. If I do it correctly, then of course, I have more leverage and more bat speed.
Taylor Gardner 23:42
But bat speed takes time. And so, when I see a lot of kids, they start here and the lever pull even more on their hands get across the face really soon, elbows way behind their hand and not even close to be slotted. And next thing you know, you’re chopping down or they slice it, and more important, their swing radius and swing arc may only go so far. Versus if I clear, I can get a further reach. And it’d be right within my wheelhouse of comfortability.
Joey Myers 24:13
If we go back to your contact points, right, knowing what your contact points are. When we work with our hitters on what we call our horizontal approach, or our line-to-line approach. Being able to hit the ball the other way, pull it, and go up the middle things like that. We talked about that there are two main things to be aware of… one is what you’ve already said is your contact point. But number two is when that barrel enters the hitting zone.
Joey Myers 24:38
And it’s going to be different for we call middle in and middle away. It’s going to be different. So middle away and middle down. That snapping early getting the barrel in the zone early makes sense. It’s a great middle down of the strike zone middle away approach. But when it comes to middle in the middle up, it doesn’t make sense, and I use those bad cues that I thought were bad about four years ago. Swing down, barrel above the ball, we do use those but only for middle in, middle up.
Is there ever a time when ‘swing down’ or ‘barrel above the hands’ cues can work?
Taylor Gardner 25:05
But right. Speaking along those lines… Yes, have you ever had a kid trying out a new baseball bat and Oh man, he’s struggling with the weight or it was too long for him. But that’s some of the stuff you’ve been told, just remember that when this bat is laying horizontal, is heavier, as far as where the balance is. There’s a reason we stack the barrel. And there’s a reason we hold this bat up, you can hold it with one finger.
Taylor Gardner 25:34
That’s how life, if you will, work how to control the bat, Matt Nokes talks about this, why, the barrel above the hands, it’s taken me a while, the feel can be down, in fact there is a down move in the swing, hold your posture. It’s called your head. The balls is below you. Yes, we want to swing on plane. Of course. But how you get to that barrel entering the zone. And before it starts that actual upswing? That is paramount.
Taylor Gardner 26:07
That also was still wrong with the down early method. Yeah, you’ve got there. But did you give up timing, to get to position at contact. Did you give up adjustments, because your only move is to get there. If you were able to just keep your hands and be ready for that high and inside pitch, as Perry husband would say we get to focus on EV tunnels.
Taylor Gardner 26:34
If I’m ready for that, then great. And then I can always adjust if I need to. Wait adjustment patterns, that kind of dynamic plan. Not everyone would agree with me on this, but just from a third party perspective, if the high and inside pitch is the ball that we have to get the barrel out there quickest to, it makes sense to me to be on time with that and adjust down and away with that, because you have more time or space, ball is further away from me to do so, obviously, you get in the baseball stuffs like, well, if you’re looking middle middle, and then that gets tougher if you’re looking away if you’re looking wherever.
Taylor Gardner 27:19
I don’t want to get into the approach part of it. But it just makes sense to me that you can practice, play around practicing with looking high and in, get that pitch locked in, and then we’ll work it down to middle middle, get that adjustment pattern locked in. Maybe for some people, it’s not so much that they have to change their approach, maybe they just need to be comfortable getting to all these pitches vertically, you might not have to worry about what my timing is good, I’m swinging at the right pitches, just getting jammed a lot on high.
Taylor Gardner 27:51
Well, maybe it’s just because you’re dumping your barrel too soon. It’s okay, you got to find where that issue is, and not fight it. But again, let your plan help you get there. The barrel above the hands is a great plan. It helps me already be ready for that movement pattern… sure, maybe you get to that pitch well maybe you’re facing speeds you can handle and you’re struggling with low and away. So maybe you do have to think about releasing that barrel sooner. Okay, nothing wrong with that.
Taylor Gardner 28:23
I would give everyone hesitation to just go out and put out a YouTube video saying this is the one and only way, of course it’s not. But we must understand all of it so that when you hear someone say something, to filter through what they’re saying, you’ll see why he’s doing it, that makes sense. When you come out and some of these instructors say just one swing plane for every pitch. And if I just wait longer than I can see it longer. We know that’s not exactly be true. Eyes don’t see the ball much longer just because we’re not swinging.
If one of the best, Mike Trout, is giving up 20-mph of ball exit speed, how much do mere mortals give up doing the same thing?
Joey Myers 28:56
Well and what’s also interesting is what the actual hitting operating system is when you can watch somebody, when you have been around the block and you’ve seen a lot of these different teachings, you can see what their main operating system is. And I know you and I were similar in this and we want to maintain high ball exit speeds.
Joey Myers 29:16
When you get a hitting guy that’s talking about a certain thing like hey, we need to get that at high and inside pitch with the bend in the front arm we need to get there, well we know that Perry Husband said Mike Trout, one of the best in the world will go down is one of the best top five probably, ever top five top 10 and down and away average ball exit speed is 101 miles an hour, not his top out but his average. And that’s where he’s locked out with that elbow at contact.
Joey Myers 29:45
And then at up and in, he’s reduced to a high school baseball player at 80 to 83 miles an hour. So he’s losing almost around 20 miles an hour ball exit speed that’s 80 feet. That’s 80 feet of batted ball distance that he’s giving up by looking away and adjusting in. Well, some people go well, that’s fine. But here’s the deal. And this is what I tell my players I say, Mike Trout is a once in a lifetime player. He’s just one of those people that we will look back on when he’s done with his career. And we will say he’s one of the best. One of the best ever is giving up 20 miles an hour ball exit speed.
Joey Myers 29:50
20 miles an hour.
Joey Myers 30:24
You know what the amateurs are probably giving up. 30-35 miles an hour ball exit speed? He’s one of the best he can get away with it. You’re going to be given up a lot more.
Taylor Gardner 30:34
Yeah. I can’t remember if it was you or someone else had brought to my attention. It was before COVID happened. I think it was the baseball season before. And they asked, who hit their highest exit speed most often? Try and word that correctly. And I was like, Oh, I don’t know. And there’s Jose Altuve. And Aaron Judge. I was like, oh, okay, wow, two different types of hitter’s sizes body length. They said, Oh, you know how often they hit their hardest exit speeds?
Taylor Gardner 31:06
And at first, I’m like, Oh, these big leaguers? Oh, man, I bet 20% of their hits or they’re popping out near their top exit speeds. It was less than 2%. Wow, less than 2% of all of their hits, on miss hits in the realm of hitting is as hard as you can. What does that mean, though? Does that mean maybe they’re slowing their swing down and touching the ball? No, I don’t think so. And in my opinion, obviously get fooled on some pitches. Okay, fine.
Taylor Gardner 31:33
But I think most of their base hits that they reported, I think their miss hits are that powerful. And once you start to realize that homeruns are the best result, okay, but maybe your best result is a hard line shot, single or double, whatever. However hard you get whatever type of hit is your hardest hit, which for most people is a low launch angle, I dunno, maybe 0-5, maybe 10 degrees. And then that makes sense. Balls coming down about 5, 7, 8 degrees.
Taylor Gardner 32:03
And you can imagine that plane, you’re going to give up exit speed when you raise or lower your launch angle. And I see a lot of people don’t understand that. Oh, no. My hardest hits home runs. Not exactly. I want to say the highest ball ever recorded was a ground ball. Double play. It’s okay. It’s okay that if your exit speed fluctuates, based on how well you struck that ball for a single, double, triple based on how high or low you hit it, that’s fine. And you want to start tightening those windows up.
Taylor Gardner 32:33
But Backspin tee, you know Taylor, Joey, you can’t control your launch angles, not saying you can control your launch angles. It’s just like I’m not saying you can even hit why I’m saying though, is you can work on the precision of contact and work on your precision posture and swing plane. And when it lines up, you smoke a ball at the pitcher’s head, you did your job. And when the next at-bat, it probably feels the same and you hit a homerun, guess what you did your job. You hit the ball far. But more importantly, your plan gave you the ability to fall as hard as potentially could that swing.
Taylor Gardner 33:08
And that’s Oh man, how many young kids have you seen? You throw them one change-up… They’re crushing balls… you throw them one change up. And then the next 10 swings are crap. They just can’t find it… it just ruins their world. It’s like, oh, man, you got to filter that out. Trust the plan and get to the next pitch. It’s okay.
Joey Myers 33:29
Yeah, exactly. That’s crazy. Yeah, that’s a good one to end on. And that’s another call for another day. I want to be respectful of your time because you’ve got a little one that’s down there. And she’s been great. By the way.
Taylor Gardner 33:40
She’s sleeping now.
Joey Myers 33:41
She’s asleep. Yeah, she’s asleep. I’m talking too loudly. I’m talking to you loudly. But hey, I want to let you get back to the baby and get back to the family. hopefully get some sleep. Maybe she’ll take take a nap with her. But hey, where can people find you? socials, website, any kind of deals that you got going on right now? Go ahead. And…
Where can people find more about you guys?
Taylor Gardner 34:04
Yes, so find us on Google backspin bat tee to find backspintee.com, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, we have a 20% off code at the moment. If you use the code BATBROS. For those of you that follow the baseball bat pros, I’m very good friends with them. They are great people Bill Taylor and them and they’re amazing people. But you’re also going to find our bat tee in Dick’s Sporting Goods here soon. So be on the lookout.
Taylor Gardner 34:28
Hopefully, Academy is a follow that as well for those that maybe that’s closer to here. And we’re trying hard to get Mark word shields and some other big retail stores. But the Dick’s Sporting Goods we’re shipping that out here in a couple days. Extremely excited to make that next jump to the big retail because we’ve done so well on the individual bat tee sale and it’s time to make that move.
Joey Myers 34:50
Yeah, congratulations, buddy. I’ve been with you for a lot of this bat tee journey. I think we jumped on probably we start building our relationship maybe your second year I think you guys are. So, so I’m just excited for you guys. And I know you guys have been just like all of us been through our ups and downs and stuff and it sounds like you guys are starting to starting to rise again. So yeah,
Taylor Gardner 35:12
Yeah, it all started with Joey Myers experiment video, my bat tee versus the other tee, and we didn’t know each other so you have to watch that video.
Joey Myers 35:20
Again. See how they turned out? Yeah, it was in a very bias thing, I was probably, we had run into each other a couple times. We talked on the phone maybe once or twice and I was like, you know what, let’s try this out. Let’s do a bat tee experiment on it. I think it turned out well for you guys.
Taylor Gardner 35:34
Yeah, I think well back to the precision of contact, just changing that visual. You had a more funnel effect with the Backspin Bat Tee, and with the traditional tee, it was a little more scattered and it just makes you wonder, not promoting my bat tee over another tee… Tee just are you working on your precision and in your vision obviously has a lot to do with that so, pick up a Backspin Bat Tee, give it a shot, if you don’t like don’t like it, then I’ll give you your money back. Yeah, definitely.
Joey Myers 36:01
Right. Then percent off and you get 20% BATBROS. B-A-T-B-R-O-S, and that’s all caps, correct? Cool. All right, brother. Well, thanks. Keep up the good bat tee work. Congrats on everything and congrats on the little girl. My first time seeing her.
Taylor Gardner 36:13
Thank you bud.
Joey Myers 36:14
Alright brother. Take care of yourself.
Taylor Gardner 36:16
Have a good one.
Joey Myers 36:17
Have a good Easter.
Taylor Gardner 36:18
Thank you.
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https://hittingperformancelab.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/bat-tee-e1617902685923.png281500Joey Myershttps://hittingperformancelab.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/hitting-performance-labs_c90c0362088ef1d3d528f3078f4f8ac1-300x75.pngJoey Myers2021-04-08 17:31:572021-04-08 18:14:29Bat Tee Co-Founder: How To Make Adjustments [VIDEO]
Hitting Drills For Kids: How To Keep Hitters Productive At Home Despite COVID-19
(Correction in above hitting drills for kids video: I said this started last Wednesday, March 25th, but I couldn’t get this up in time, so the next day it was! CLICK HERE to view Today’s Hitting Workout Of the Day – WOD.
Self quarantine. “Shelter-in-place”. Losing a job. Tireless work. Medical care workers, military, police and fire departments. Sacrificing sport seasons. Seniors in High School and College losing their 2020 year. Politicians bickering – as usual.
I totally understand. It SUCKS. And I’m sorry who’ve lost a job or loved one because of this nasty virus. My thoughts and prayers go out to you and your families. I hope and pray things get better soon.
But you know what coach? We’re going to get through this. Together. Genghis Khan once said:
“One arrow alone can easily be broken but many arrows are indestructible”.
I understand the uncertainty out there. And if you’re like my family, we have two little blessings (7yo boy and 4yo girl), running around at home. The challenge is, we have to keep them in productive mode, or else they’re fighting like cats and dogs. And at the same time my wife and I are juggling work from home in good ol’ shelter-in-place California.
I’m not going to lie, it’s REAL easy to keep the kiddos on their devices all day. But I don’t believe that’s the best thing for their little developing minds. Same is true for the teen-osaurs!
Here’s what we’ll cover in this post:
How to keep hitters productive at home despite COVID-19,
How To Keep Hitters Productive At Home Despite COVID-19
One of my online hitting lesson dads posted this Twitter “to-do” list to keep the kiddos busy at home… (he elaborates on this schedule in the comments below)
If anybody needs a to-do list to keep kids busy, here’s one we use and update each day. pic.twitter.com/7pEBCyZSRf
I would be honored to be a part of your at-home schedule!
At-Home Hitting Drills for Kids Challenge Rules
WHEN
The challenge will run from Thursday March 26th, through Easter Sunday, April 12th. Wishful thinking is that this COVID-19 thing is under wraps by then, and things become as normal as circumstances allow.
Check-in EVERY day at about 8:00AM pacific standard time. That day’s Hitting WOD will stay up that whole day. PLEASE NOTE: Each day I’ll take down yesterday’s Hitting WOD and replace with today’s. So, if you’re busy, I’d suggest stopping in and at least taking notes, so you don’t miss out.
…you can use this as hitting homework. “Baseball with dad or mom” as Tyson put it in his Tweet. Each day will guide you in one of 5 areas:
Building more power,
Hitting more line drives,
Getting on-time more often,
Moving better to perform better (body work training), or
Sticky coaching cues.
Like Crossfit, think of this as a Hitting “Workout Of the Day” – or Hitting WOD.
HOW
Every single day, we’ll keep it simple. I’m just asking at least 5-minutes per day to do the Hitting WOD.
By the way, on some days, I’m going to do random giveaways. Online hitting lessons. An autographed copy of my Amazon bestselling book. Possibly hitting aids. We’ll see what happens. The more you share this on the socials, the better chance you have at winning! Best part is, it won’t cost you a thing!
Today’s Hitting WOD (DAY-17 and Final Day)
Today’s hitting drills for kids videos are coming to an end. Sadly. But the good news is… Today and tomorrow (Easter) I want to giveaway one FREE online hitting lesson from our own The Feedback Lab program…
How can you win? Simply by leaving a comment below. I pick a random comment and declare the winner on the Monday after Easter. Good luck and I hope you all have a Happy and Safe Easter! PLEASE NOTE: this offer is closed and we’re no longer taking winners.
BONUS Extra Credit to Sweeten the Deal
Before this whole Chinese Coronavirus thing picked up steam, I was working on a low-cost monthly membership called Swing Smarter Newsletter Monthly. I will be putting a TON of time and effort into each issue.
Once per month, we’ll be offering up:
One training tip video on how to fix a certain flaw,
1-month in review curated content on Sticky Coaching or Moving Better to Perform Better, and
Hitting aid review, how it MUST be used for success, & discounts…
The monthly membership fee was going to be $9.95 per month. We’re also offering a 30-day money back guarantee to take the risk away. Cancel within that period and we’ll give you your money back. No worries. No questions asked. No hard feelings.
Click the button below to grab access to Swing Smarter Newsletter Monthly…
Grab Swing Smarter Monthly Newsletter for Low Cost of One Venti White Chocolate Mocha at Starbucks Per Month!
YES! SIGN ME UP
Grab Swing Smarter Monthly Newsletter for Low Cost of One Venti White Chocolate Mocha at Starbucks Per Month!
YES! SIGN ME UP
, I wanted to employ the Scientific Method to analyze how a hitter’s “Flat Bat at Landing”, or toe touch, adds or takes away from key swing performance metrics including Bat Speed at Impact, Time To Impact, Attack Angle, and Ball Exit Speeds.
to measure Ball Exit Speeds,
to measure Ball Exit Speeds,
to record swings, and
, explain the importance of fascia (said like Fashia).
, Jaime Cevallos called the hitter bending into the front knee at landing, or to buy more time, the:
. He was an aeronautical engineer for Boeing during the Great Depression, and fell in love with golf, and applied his engineering principles to the golf swing.
. He says hitters standing on one diagonal leg of the “X” encourages the springiness of fascia. He taught this to his 15yo daughter, who has hit over .600 the last couple years playing Fast-Pitch Softball in Texas, which is one of the hotbeds for both baseball and softball competition in the country. Oh and by the way, she also hit a half dozen homers as well.
is where 70-80% of consistent power is found. The best example I like to share can be found in 
’ said, that locomotion, the arms and legs aren’t necessary for locomotion, they’re an enhancement, they help enhance movement of the spinal engine.
’ way back, I think it was in the early 2000’s or mid to late 2000’s. He talked about this idea of a ‘Cushion’. You’ll see a hitter especially, if they’re looking fastball, and they see a curve ball or changeup. You’ll see them actually bend, sink, or cushion into their knees. They use their knees by bending them to buy them a little bit of time to get on time a lot better. It’s pushing the ‘pause’ button.
, and harness the power of the spinal engine. If you want a majority of power, 70-80% of consistent power.
, they use it in pitching a lot. But in hitting, we use the VeloPro.
– with Door Anchor, Handles, Ankle Straps – Stackable Up To 80lbs – For Resistance Training, Physical Therapy, Home Workouts, or the…
.
. Williams talked about barrel meeting the plane of the pitch. Trout’s natural tendency runs counter to this. And what he tells himself, remember the body is one or two steps behind the brain, is to do the exact opposite of what his natural tendency is. He tells himself to get on top of the ball. And what’s the result? The barrel ends up somewhere in the middle of extreme uppercut and negative attack angle downswing. That’s what he’s trying to get for his real… to get to the middle.
, calls this 
paradoxical intention? Overall, my whole team is hitting more line drives. Now my line drivers aren’t lonely. They have more competition to deal with. Competition makes everyone better. Hungrier. Especially when they’re experiencing success. Does that make sense?
, 
, HitTrax, 
, or 
, then you’re flying blind. You aren’t going to know. And those hunches will just be hunches.
by K
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