Posts

Hitting Training For Baseball & Softball Swing Trainers | Hitting Performance Lab

Baseball Batting Stance That Will Reduce Strikeouts?

 

Baseball Batting Stance: Daniel Murphy

2015 Daniel Murphy in triple flexion (hip, knees, and ankles). Photo courtesy: MLB.com

This post will discuss the proper youth batting stance and how to improve power for both baseball and softball in 2022.  Best open, square, closed, and wide stance information in addition to whether to keep the back elbow up or down hitting tips.

The baseball batting stance video post was sparked by my friend, whom I admire and respect as a man AND hitting instructor, doing great work in the San Diego-California area, Ryan Lehr (@thepureswingsd).

He’s worked under the hitting tutelage of Reggie Smith for over 15 years, and really has a fantastic grasp of the absolutes to the swing.

For those of you who don’t know Reggie Smith’s teachings, he’s as much of a ‘science-guy’ as we are.

And yes, this works for fastpitch softball as well as baseball.

The point of this video post, is to look at being in an athletic baseball batting stance and its effect on reducing strikeouts.

We’ll be looking at:

  • Effective baseball batting stance context,
  • Metrics of low-strikeout high-ISO hitters, and
  • Which low-K% high-ISO MLB hitters to model?

 

Effective Baseball Batting Stance Context

Easier to Hit Difficult Pitches

At Ryan Lehr & Reggie Smith’s Christmas hitting clinic, Kevin Sweeney talked about how getting more athletic in his baseball batting stance allowed him to hit difficult pitches

Making Adjustments to Gravitational Forces

Taylor Gardner, founder of the Backspin Batting Tee, says that a first baseman stretches toward the thrown ball when receiving it.  Knees are bent and the eyes are getting on level plane with thrown ball and receiving glove.

Gravitational Forces are acting on the ball at ALL times.

Here’s something that may piss off some fastpitch softball pitching coaches and pitchers…

Taylor Gardner came to the conclusion that a ‘rise-ball’ is a myth.  And I AGREE!

And if you don’t believe us:

  • Find your fastest fastpitch softball pitcher,
  • Video record her throwing a ‘rise-ball’ from the side angle where you get her and the catcher in the same frame, and
  • Track the trajectory of the ball’s flight to the catcher’s glove on slo-mo software…

I guarantee the apex of the pitched ball’s arc will be above where it’s caught by the catcher.

It’s because of GRAVITY!!!

Sure the arc will be less, the harder the pitcher throws, but there will still be an arc nonetheless.

Who Else Gets into an Athletic Position?

Baseball Batting Stance: Michael Brantley

2015 Michael Brantley in triple flexion. Photo courtesy: MLB.com

I ask my players what knee position they’d start in if they were:

  • Defending against a quickly advancing soccer striker,
  • Defending a fast wide receiver five-yards off the line,
  • The only one between a breakaway power forward and the hoop in basketball,
  • Going to throw a 16-pound Shot Put as far as humanly possible, or
  • Receiving a blazing serve from Roger Federer?

CLICK HERE for Speed Coach Lee Taft (@LeeTaft) blog post on why bending the knees is important to force production.

I alluded to the ‘triple flexion’ baseball batting stance in this video post breaking down Joey Votto’s swing.

Votto has one of the best swings to model if you want to cut down on ground-balls, strikeouts, weak fly balls, and just want to get on base more and make more frequent solid contact.  He’s the ultimate Pitch-Plane Dominator!

Metrics of Low-Strikeout High-ISO Hitters

I wanted to compare the Strikeout Percentage and ISO metrics to see if we could find a correlation between the baseball batting stance and hitters who rarely strikeout, but also maintain some element of power.

One of the biggest MYTHS is that you can only be a contact hitter, or a power hitter.  And that you can’t be both.  Nowadays, SABERmetric people conclude that when homers go up, so does the rise of strikeouts.

My belief is there CAN BE more going on between the numbers…

When looking back in time, we saw quite a few examples of fusing minimal strikeouts and raw power…Hank Aaron, Ted Williams, Joe Dimaggio, and Babe Ruth to name a few.

Okay, so what is ISO?  Isolated Power, according to FanGraphs.com basically describes a hitters “raw power”.

For you SABR wannabe math nerds (like me!), here’s a simple formula to compute ISO in two different ways:

  • ISO = SLG minus AVG, OR
  • ISO = Extra Bases divided by At-Bats 

Here’s an excel spreadsheet I put together, using FanGraph.com’s metrics, on the top-5 highest and lowest strikeout percentages among 2015 hitters, their ISO’s, and dinger totals:

Baseball Batting Stance: K% v. ISO Top-5

We analyze the highlighted hitters in the above video. Daniel Murphy and Michael Brantley having virtually above average ISO’s…

Compare how these hitters rank for K%:

strikeout-rating

According to Fangraphs.com

Compare how these hitters stack up for ISO:

iso-rating

According to FanGraphs.com

What’s plain as day is how ‘awful’ the top-5 highest K% are.  Eee-gads!  Not even trying there 😛

The silver lining though, is that there are a couple top-5 lowest K% that have virtually above average ISO’s, and one I’m excited to see perform in 2016 with a change in his baseball batting stance toward the end of the 2015 season…

 

Which Low Strikeout MLB Hitters to Model?

Baseball Batting Stance: Joc Pederson 2015 BEFORE/AFTER change

Notice Joc Pederson baseball batting stance change – left image is halfway through 2015 & right image is at the end of 2015. Photo courtesy: MLB.com

As Tony Robbins says, “Success leaves clues”.  He also said,

“If you want to be successful, find someone who has achieved the results you want and copy what they do and you’ll achieve the same results.”

If you’re the coach (or hitter) who’s goal it is to reduce strikeouts among your hitters, while also preserving some elements of power, whose swing should you model?

…At least from a baseball batting stance point of view?

After analyzing the metrics, my answer’s are:

  • Daniel Murphy,
  • Michael Brantley, and
  • Joc Pederson (the end of 2015 baseball batting stance version).

Watch the video above for more in-depth analysis of these hitters.

I’m not sure how many strikeouts Joc Pederson had without ‘triple flexion’ in 2015 versus with it, but I’m anticipating way less strikeouts for him in 2016 if he keeps this principle in his baseball batting stance.  He’s a special hitter, and not a very big slugger (6’1″, 215-pounds).

Also, I know that correlation may not equal causation in this case, but it’s worth looking into.  So I’d love your thoughts and analysis on other low K% hitters with above average ISO’s…

To be continued… 😉

Hitting Training For Baseball & Softball Swing Trainers | Hitting Performance Lab

“Best Drill For Being Out In Front All The Time. Always Makes Contact Way Out In Front, Weak Hits & No Power”…

 

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

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

Here’s what we discuss in this episode:

  • Short Intro’sPerry Husband & Joey Myers Hitting Jam Session #2
  • Most effective ways to boost BES
  • How to know “who/what” to follow – by doing swing experiments
  • Swing eval at home & future case study Jam Sessions
  • Q/A

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

 

Show Notes

  • At about the 30-sec mark, the whole point of these Jam Sessions, equipping coaches to do petri dish evaluations at home collecting data, bringing us this data, and we can help coaches get their hitters better using real data and human movement principles validated by real Science.
  • At about 5-minute, 30-sec mark, Perry answers what he thinks is the biggest mistake coaches make in boosting ball exit speed, watching videos on YouTube, the lead arm shape (bend or straighten?), locking out beforehand causes a chain reaction that stretches out rubber bands, going from bent to straight right at impact doesn’t optimally stretch out rubber, not most important thing – is a piece of the machine, a bunch of things pieced together.
  • At about 8-minute mark, addressing why a barred front arm gets a bad rap on causing “longer” swings, correlation DOES NOT equal causation in this case, a consistent front arm shape equals consistency at bat-ball contact, Perry talks about “laser” experiment comparing a bent lead arm versus a barred out front arm (about 11-min mark), interestingly laser was all over with bent arm versus closer to “line” with straight front arm, getting barrel in line and keeping it there, with front arm bend there’s too much free play, at least twice as good arm bar versus bend when it comes to consistency.
  • At about 13-minute mark, talk about the main benefits to a front arm bar, longer levers multiply force at the end of the lever, a longer swing IS NOT about a bent or straight front arm – it’s about when the barrel leaves the rear shoulder, end loaded heavy bats are fantastic for training barrel path for different pitch depths, look at hitters hitting 95-mph inside – they use shorter more compact swings (the barrel leaves the shoulder later).
  • At about the 17-minute mark, Perry shares another experiment where he used a ball attached to surgical tubing attached to an anchor, pulling ball back 8-feet, then letting go and measuring speed, then stretching the tubing back further, speed increases and ball hits wall sooner than the shorter pull back, Perry explains shortening front arm can help get on time but hitter gives up hard ball contact (70% their 1-arm max).
  • At about 20-minute, 30-sec mark, talking about when you’re teaching hitters, what is your hitting “operating system”?  Is your goal for hitters to increase hard ball contact?  Is it to reduce strikeouts?  Based on your hitting operating system, you’ll choose specific hitting mechanics that organize that support the specific operating system,  barrel path will change based on pitch depth, swing to match timing – reactionary hitting, the other side of the coin is to max out 100% on-time, 100% swing effective.
  • At about 25-minute, 30-sec mark, how do we know who to follow or what to follow, Perry goes over swing evaluation you can do at home (CLICK HERE for a PDF spelling this out), build a target – Home Depot tarp, 2-foot diameter circle, cut hole in middle of circle (1-foot) creating donut, bottom of target is inline with bottom of ball on tee, target is 10-feet in front of hitter, hit top of target roughly 20-degree, middle roughly 10-degrees, measure ball exit speeds, give points: 1-point for hitting it through the middle, hits outside ring 0.5-point, miss target = 0.  Out of ten swings good is 4/10 (or .400).  If not at .400, then something is missing.  Average ball exit speed should be around 90% of your 1-rep. max.  Plot where the misses are, and number which hits they were. (Ask Perry for blank diagram on this).  Measuring ball exit speed with Zepp, SwingTracker, BlastMotion, PocketRadar, Bushnell Radar gun,
  • At about 33-minute mark, Perry talks about use of imagination or visualization, physical changes are tough under competitive pressures of a game, practicing your game swing, changing intent changes the swing, i.e. hitter hitting pop ups, changing intent to hit a low screaming line drive helps brain organize body to change the swing without thinking internal cues.
  • At about 39-minute mark, imagine a bendy tube attaching the pitcher’s release to contact, we want the hitter to hit the ball back through tube the pitch came from, external cues versus internal cues, getting a ballpark of what the hitter is doing by setting hitter up on a tee that is positioned as a middle middle location, if hitter is pulling all the time or going other way too much or popping ball up too much or hitting a lot of ground-balls, along with ball exit speed measurements.
  • At about 42-minute mark, Perry asks me about the springy fascia, the idea of a “rubber suit” creating stretch in the suit as you twist up, springy ‘X’ pattern – ‘X’ on chest and back, compression and tension forces, Granite has a high compression rate but has a terrible tension rate, Boom crane tension forces can be found in the cable holding the wrecking ball, body uses both compression and tension forces, hitter’s front shoulder comes in and down (shortening chest leg of the ‘X’), other leg of the ‘X’ on the chest lengthens, on the backside – the corresponding legs of the ‘X’ does the opposite, Scapula Row?  Biggest mistake coaches make is forcing hitters to keep front shoulder straight instead of protracting the front Scapula, Arm barring front arm helps with ‘showing numbers’ AND ‘hiding hands’.
  • At about 60-minute mark, hitter lets go of bat hits 370-foot homer, while holding on hits ball 480-feet, pitch velocity and location were same, timing was a little different, Physicist Dr. Alan Nathan says once bat is in motion hitter doesn’t have to hold onto bat at impact – force is already there, locking out at impact helps transfer energy better, look at all the data on batted balls that go the farthest – they look the same, arm is locked out, test hitting a fully inflated basketball exit speed should be around 80% of 1-rep max – if not then losing swing effectiveness, Newtonian Physics v. non-Newtonian Physics, Physics is limited to Physics (external forces), Bio-Mechanics is limited to Biomechanics, etc.
  • About about 57-minute mark, Perry answers question: “Best drill for being out in front all the time, always makes contact way out in front, weak hits and no power?” Every pitch location has one ideal contact point, make swing in slow motion to find what’s optimal, body is reaching too much, one drill: the “Riiiiiight-Now!” Drill (“Right” is at release, where impact is the “now”).
  • HittingIsAGuess.com @EVPerryHusband, special offer for any of his online courses use: EV25 discount code
  • Special offer from me the FREE print Catapult Loading System Book, just pay $8.95 Shipping & Handling (retails on Amazon for $19.97)https://www.truthaboutexplosiverotationalpower.com/pl/60039