Baseball Answers Why Am I Always Late on the Ball?

HomeBlogsJack Perconte's blogBaseball Answers Why Am I Always Late on the Ball?

Author:

Jack Perconte

Fri, 09/07/2018 - 05:39

The baseball answers to swinging late have to do with either a long swing or not seeing the ball very well. As with all problems, it may not be just one thing that solves the problem, but a combination of many things. Good coaches have many possible baseball answers for problems and combine those to solve the problem.

Baseball Answers for Late Swings

Here are some useful baseball answers for hitting coaches to try to help the common hitting situation of batters always swinging late on pitched balls.

Vision - The first thing to address is making sure batters are seeing the ball well. The obvious thing is to have hitters have their eyesight checked before every season. Next, coaches should have players focus on watching the ball the whole way to home, from the pitchers release to the hitting zone. Often, players only focus on the ball two thirds of the way, either the first portion or the last, with either method causing players timing to be off and to swing late on balls.

A couple of good ways to help players focus are:

A. Have players read numbers from pitchers hands or place different ball types whiffle, tennis, rag, etc in batting practice pitcher's hand and players yell out which ball is coming. These methods help players watch the ball more intently form the release point, as opposed to the waiting for a good pitch philosophy, which has them waiting too long.

B. Along those lines, it is important players expect each pitch to be their pitch and not have the wait and see approach,

causing them to not time balls from the beginning.
es over the object. This makes sure they are seeing the ball the last portion of the flight path.C. On the other end, set an object out front of home about 10 feet in front of batters and have them yell out when the ball cross

2. Mechanics there is no way of getting around good hitting mechanics, which involves a compact swing. Batters with long swings are late on pitched balls more often than not, so coaches must continually work on the mechanics of the swing to create the compact swing.

3. Challenge players in batting practice with faster speeds, even slightly faster than game speeds. Often, players learn to adjust on their own, after seeing enough of the fast speed pitches.

A combination of all of these baseball answers give coaches a good chance to help batters, who are continually late on pitches.

About Jack Perconte

After playing major league baseball, Jack Perconte has taught baseball and softball since 1988 and offered valuable coaching training too. He has helped numerous youth players reach their potential, as well as having helped parents and coaches navigate their way through the challenging world of youth sports. Jack is one of the leading authorities in the areas of youth baseball training and coaching training advice.

All Jack Perconte articles are used with copyright permission.