Batting Average Increased with this Hitting Drill

How to Hit for a Higher Batting Average

Many youth baseball players have "good enough" hand eye coordination to get away with incorrect hitting mechanics and have early success because of that. However, those incorrect swing mechanics become tough to change habits down the road, leading to short baseball careers.

Additional Reading: What is a Good Batting Average in Baseball?

Correct hitting position is necessary for the correct swing path and that is the beginning of increasing your child's batting average. Setting the hands and bat barrel correctly give players a chance at driving their hands to the ball, with the back elbow staying in, so the correct palm-up, palm down contact position occurs. Hitting has a falling domino effect, one move leads to the next and so on. This hitting drill sets the hands and bat correctly, leading to the correct baseball swing path, which leads to a higher batting average. Any parent can increase their child's batting average and OPS stat with knowledge and practice of this baseball drill.

Hitting Drill for High Batting Average

Players square their feet, wide open to the pitcher, with the ball a few inches in front of them on a batting tee. With the bat beginning on the shoulder and the knob pointing down, hitters turn their front shoulder until it points at the imaginary pitcher. At this point, the hitter checks to make sure the knob is down and the bat barrel is sitting directly above the shoulder. Once the bat is in the ideal position, with help from a coach, at first, players look at and aim for the inside back of the ball while swinging. Because the player's hips are already open, consistent line drives are soon the result. This drill works with short flip work, too.

Move 3 - look and aim at inside back of ball

Start of hitting drill to increase batting average

2nd Hitting Drill Move

Players will be surprised how easy line drives come with this drill. Of course, when they don't that is the reason for the drill. Setting different tee heights is good too. Once players consistently hit line drives in this manner at various tee locations, they should turn the normal way, complete the same hitting position and bat path to the inside back of the ball, and watch their batting average soar.

Swing follow through

Hands and barrel to ball

Contact position

Why Higher Batting Average Results

Most young hitters start the bat out of position or lose correct hitting position before swinging. It is important to understand that any distance added to the baseball swing, beyond what is necessary to promote bat speed and bat quickness, causes incorrect baseball hitting mechanics. This increased distance prevents staying back, explosive hips with weight transfer, and most importantly, squaring up the ball.

Additionally, most coaches spend a lot of time working on getting players to step and turn correctly, but that time is often wasted, until the correct swing path is achieved. Almost all hitting problems disappear once the correct swing path occurs, if not right away, over time. It is easier to help kids learn to turn their hips than it is to have the correct swing path.

When the baseball swing path is incorrect, hitters invent ways of getting to the ball. When those swing mechanics become a habit, as they do with most hitters, it is very difficult to break hitters from those incorrect hitting mechanics and a low batting average is the result, especially when players get to the curve ball levels of baseball.

The good news is that most bad habits, as stepping in the bucket, pulling the front shoulder, dropping the hands, collapsing the back side, casting the bat out disappear once the bat is set correctly and the swing path is corrected. This takes time to change hitter's muscle memory, but a higher batting average will result, not to mention a chance to lengthen the player's career.

To summarize, once hitters get the correct hitting position and swing path with this hitting drill, their previous bad hitting mechanics begin to fade away.