365 Days to Better Baseball - Don"™t be Fooled by Swing Mechanics

Tuesday Tips to Tattoo the Ball Good Hitters Use the Whole Field, as Do Bad Hitters?

Many hitters I work with say they use the whole field when they hit. Unfortunately, this may not always be good because:

Good hitters take outside pitches and hit them the opposite way, hit balls in the center of the plate up the middle and pull inside pitches. Bad hitters do it differently they pull outside pitches and are usually late on inside pitches, going to the opposite field with those. Pitches in the middle of the plate are liable to go anywhere for batters with incorrect swings.

There is no better sign of the bad swing mechanics than this occurrence, especially for kids who have good hand eye coordination and those who are big for their age. They can get away with the incorrect swing up to a certain age, but it starts to catch up with them around junior high school age, if not before.

The point is that coaches and players should be aware of which pitches are being hit where, especially in batting practice. When this hitting the wrong pitches in the wrong direction occurs, players should work on improved swing mechanics, before it is too late. Hitting off a batting tee placed in different pitch locations is a good start to this improvement. Practicing hitting balls to the correct fields in batting practice, no matter the speed of the pitches, is the next step. When players can hit balls to the correct fields, better baseball swing mechanics are present and the chances of long-range success are enhanced.