Hitting and Hitters Discussion Move up on the ball? Destroy a swing.

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Just a thought, You here the players that have played in college say all the time that the best way to hit a rise ball is to move up in the box and catch it before it rises. I don't think you can compare softball with baseball with the motion of the pitcher or the path of the ball being so different. JMO

Buckman in terms of the batters view point I would agree that SB is different than BB. In terms of how you swing at a rise ball vs a high heater in BB they are pretty much the same swing. I dont teach my boys any different than I teach my girls about how to approach hitting a high ball in the zone.

Dana.

 

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In all due respect.... I don't think so!!!!! The timing will not be affected any more than the change in the speed of the pitch or the stride of the pitcher.... and maybe we should say the heigth of the pitcher. All of these factors will affect when the ball will get to the batter and at what angle.

 

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In all due respect.... I don't think so!!!!! The timing will not be affected any more than the change in the speed of the pitch or the stride of the pitcher.... and maybe we should say the heigth of the pitcher. All of these factors will affect when the ball will get to the batter and at what angle.

Take a look at this and tell me what you think.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_de3HJvO-N8

 

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Since as always Bustos was brought up, lets bring up Nuveman. She could hit a little lol, here is a copy and paste from a Q&A

MJ (So-town)


Stacey, you are a textbook hitter!! What's your strategy, up in the box to catch it before it breaks, or back in the box for another split second to pull the trigger?

Stacey Nuveman (2:10 PM)


Hitting is all about adjustments. Some situations I'll move up in the box to beat the break. In other situations, I'm toward the back to give myself more time. If I am seeing the ball well, I'm right in the middle so I can do a little of both.

 

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These are questions I would like answered: Isn`t it actually gravity that has the most effect on the ball because when you talk about slower speeds isn`t gravity going to effect the ball sooner? Do most batters eyes lets say @ release are still focused on the release point making the ball appear to have more movement than it has? Is it true that most hitters do not see the ball contacting the bat? When you see a pitch from the stands sitting behind the catcher or from behind the pitcher does the ball actually move more than what the hitter and catcher see or is that an optical illusion? Is it the same effect as when you watch a pitch appear to have a lot of movement when your watching it on television.

 

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Take a look at this and tell me what you think.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_de3HJvO-N8

The only thing that I have to say is "Damn, she is one good lookin' lady!!!!!"

 

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...You changed the timing of their swing by moving them forward.


That is exactly what I wanted to do by moving her up...change the timing of her swing

 

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...You changed the timing of their swing by moving them forward.


That is exactly what I wanted to do by moving her up...change the timing of her swing

But your doing it with negative results. How many times did she hit it solid for a base hit?

Its the outcome that matters.

 

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No I am not doing clinics this weekend and I have tried to cut back on the amount of clinics and lessons I have been doing. We have two grandsons now and need to spend a little more time around the home.

I am not speaking for the big girl however I have done enough clinics with her and know she only moves from the back corner of the plate to the front edge of the plate. However she does bait pitchers. If you had her ability and athleticism you could do it also.

She has stated on many occasions find me a pitcher that can make the ball drop where they want and rise where they want based on the hitters position in the box and she will call some coaches she knows!

I teach my hitters to stand at the back corner of home plate. I teach them to hit in a window that is 20 inches long. This starts from the back corner of the plate and measures 20 inches forward. For those of you that have seen my home plate the back corner has a red line. Then a blue line that is 4 inches forward of the red line and 12 inches to the next blue line and 4 inches to a green line. This is what I consider our window.

I do not have a strike zone. We have a hitters zone that is 32 inches wide and 32 inches high. This means that you could line up five balls across the front edge of home plate and be able to hit two balls off the inside or outside of home plate or a nine ball zone. We measure off from the back corner of the plate by laying the bat down so the end of the bat lines up with the outside corner of the plate and we take our lead foot and measure off from the knob of the bat. We teach our kids how to hit below the knee and at the top of the shoulder. We only want the umpires to call safe or out and it is the hitter's job to determine what they can hit and that does not mean it has to be an official strike.

If my calculations are correct at 43 feet a pitchers stride may be at approximately 38 feet. So a 65 mile per hour pitch would cross home plate at about .399 hundredths of a second. A pitch at 45 mph would cross home plate at about .576 hundredths of a second. The difference is .177 hundredths of a second. Blink your eyes twice as fast as you can and that represents about .500 hundredths of a second.

Do you really think your hitters are that good to make those adjustments considering the batters box is 7 foot long?

This is why we consider the Barry Bonds drill as a way to develop timing and rhythm while creating a swing DNA. We start from the back of the box and go from low to high slow to fast and at some point reverse our direction and go from high to low and fast to slow. If you do not think 7 feet makes a difference then simply try having your hitters move from the back of the box in increments of 1 foot and see if they struggle?

If you want to work on something useful simply ask your hitter when do they load and when do they stride based on the pitchers movements or what we term dancing with the pitcher. You may be surprised at the answers that you will receive.

In my opinion, most hitters do not load correctly and do not allow the weight to shift and are over their front knee. This is why girls throw like girls instead of athletes because they do not understand how to use their lower body.

Why do you think hitters like pitchers who throw fast? It is because you have not taught them how to adjust!

When I see a hitter over their front knee I recommend away, off speed, change up and then fast simply because they cannot adjust.

We feel the weight shift could possibly give us a few more hundredths of a second to be able to adjust. We teach our hitters how to flow to the ball and feel that throwing is hitting and hitting is throwing. We never pause and keep our momentum flowing.

When you think of how many times a hitter swings and practices from the same position in the box it makes no sense to me to make an extreme move unless you're hitter has been trained.... Just my opinion.

Howard

 

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...You changed the timing of their swing by moving them forward.


That is exactly what I wanted to do by moving her up...change the timing of her swing

Lol! Yep thats it in a nutshell

 

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The only thing that I have to say is "Damn, she is one good lookin' lady!!!!!"

Its good to know your not blind.

 

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"it makes no sense to me to make an extreme move "

Now let's define "extreme"....

 

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Hitting is about making adjustments - on every pitch - during every at bat. Whether you move up in the box to avoid the spins or stay back for that extra split second to see the ball - it is all about adjustments. Whether the pitcher throws it 62 then throws a 58 drop - hitters have to adjust. Instead of worrying about whether is it proper to move up or back it might be better to coach the hitter to understand the count and sitaution and how to recognize pitches coming out of the hand. THAT might explain why you don't see many top hitters moving around in the box as mentioned earlier. I think if you ask Stacy how well she knows the pitchers she faces when she does move around it might surprise you. At that level they have book on everyone. Now moving younger players up or back might just trigger a thought that they need to look for certain things - moving up because the pitcher is slow, moving up to catch the ball before it moves, or staying back to see the heat longer. My experience is that if you explain why you want them to do something they will be more successful. But to say that moving up 6-9 inches made a kid go O-fer is a bit of a stretch. Heck I had a future D1 kid go 0-31 during one stretch this summer and she didn't move an inch.......maybe she should have?

 

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Hitting is timing. Just look at the emphasis on timing in this thread. That's why I am a firm believer in change of speeds trumps ball movement for fastpitch... at least until you reach the highest levels against the best hitters.

Up through 16u, it really doesn't matter where you are in the box - an experienced and knowledgeable pitcher with excellent control and concealed change of speeds will own most batters. Problem is, few pitchers have the guts and control to throw tight inside pitches or a first-pitch change-up when the situation arises. Point is, hand path can be adjusted, but timing adjustments take far more training for pitch recognition, and the discipline involved.

It amazes me that people would disagree with Howard's theory about not letting the umpire dictate hittable pitches. Any time a kid can expand their hitting zone and be confident of exactly what they can hit is a scary proposition for any defense. Letting the umpire dictate the "hitting zone" is a losing, passive approach - the exact opposite of the mentality a kid should have when stepping to the plate. In college, my daughter threw a chin-high rise ball to one of Howard's kids (a CSU grad). Now this pitch was well off the plate inside and chin high - a waste pitch. The only wasting was watching the ball sail over the left field fence!! DD told me after the game - no way she could hit that pitch! WAY!! That was my Lemming moment! And yes... it would have been called a ball...

Timing, vision and hand path. Those are the biggies. The Finch video explains precisely why a baseball player struggles hitting a softball. It's about adjustments. A rise ball has a dramatically upward path that baseball players never practice against. They struggle to make a low to high adjustment. The physics of the closer pitcher proximity also exaggerates the angle.

 

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Some random reactions:

Kids are different. I have one daughter who is a creature of habit, who would benefit from the "stay in the same place in the box" school. I have another daughter who is a competitor, who will hit anything, any time, any speed, any distance. On a recent visit to my Dad's he had a bowl of jelly beans for the girls. The older one, the competitor, said: "I bet I can hit those." Next thing I know I'm throwing jelly beans to my daughter. Yeah, she can hit them. Move her in the box, make her stand on her head, whatever.

Coaches, and hitting instructors, are different. And each is "always" right. And, to be less flip, most of them have things that they teach that are hard to argue with. I would guess many folks in this forum have 3-5 voices in their daughter's ear (hitting coach, club coach, school coach, and you, sometimes more). I realize I am an extreme case, but ponder this: We have moved states in the last year. So in the last calendar year, by my quick count, my girls, between them, have listened to 14 distinct hitting "voices."

So, when you want to move a girl up in the box, because the pitch is 10 MPH slower than she wants to ideally hit at, who does she listen to? Hitting coach? Coach who just asked her to move up? Dad? (I loved a game last year, when a teammate of my youngest sauntered over to the fence, in the ODC, and whispered to her Dad: "So I take the first pitch, right?" Then I watched, bemused, as the 3rd base coach did all of his elaborate signs for naught.

I understand the Howard "don't move, stay in your zone" theory. I am sure it works. But in doing so, you also must have taught them patience, so that they are able to comfortably wait the LONG extra hundreths for the ball to get to them. I also thing this is grand if you are the hitting instructor AND the coach. But if I am a coach, and I have a down-in-the-order hitter who doesn't make timing adjustments easily, I don't understand why standing physically over the plate trumps cutting 2-3 hundreths off of the pitching time.

 

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Let me ask this: Your in a bracket game and your use to facing pitching that's in the 50-52 MPH range. Your facing a pitcher that's throwing 35 mph. Your team isn't hitting her, they are scuffling to hit the gravity "drop" ball. Your hitters aren't making adjustments. Can each of you against moving up in the box honestly tell me that would be egregious? There isn't time in an elimination game to run and get a hitting lesson. You can't as a coach just sit there while girl after girl hits weak grounders or swings over the ball if you feel an adjustment could get your hitters on track, can you?

 

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Let me ask this: Your in a bracket game and your use to facing pitching that's in the 50-52 MPH range. Your facing a pitcher that's throwing 35 mph. Your team isn't hitting her, they are scuffling to hit the gravity "drop" ball. Your hitters aren't making adjustments. Can each of you against moving up in the box honestly tell me that would be egregious? There isn't time in an elimination game to run and get a hitting lesson. You can't as a coach just sit there while girl after girl hits weak grounders or swings over the ball if you feel an adjustment could get your hitters on track, can you?

Teach them how to hit the low ball Uber.

 

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Hitting is about making adjustments - on every pitch - during every at bat. Whether you move up in the box to avoid the spins or stay back for that extra split second to see the ball - it is all about adjustments. Whether the pitcher throws it 62 then throws a 58 drop - hitters have to adjust. Instead of worrying about whether is it proper to move up or back it might be better to coach the hitter to understand the count and sitaution and how to recognize pitches coming out of the hand. THAT might explain why you don't see many top hitters moving around in the box as mentioned earlier. I think if you ask Stacy how well she knows the pitchers she faces when she does move around it might surprise you. At that level they have book on everyone. Now moving younger players up or back might just trigger a thought that they need to look for certain things - moving up because the pitcher is slow, moving up to catch the ball before it moves, or staying back to see the heat longer. My experience is that if you explain why you want them to do something they will be more successful. But to say that moving up 6-9 inches made a kid go O-fer is a bit of a stretch. Heck I had a future D1 kid go 0-31 during one stretch this summer and she didn't move an inch.......maybe she should have?

Mark hitting is about adjustments but it becomes much easier if you teach your team how to develop a consistent swing plane with the bat so that when the ball comes into the hitting zone they can match the plane of the bat with the plane of the ball by tilting at the waist and staying connected to hit it hard. If needed. Your not going to tilt on a rise ball. You start moving them in the box and all you have done is added another variable for them to have to adjust to while they hit. There are enough variables to deal with without tinkering with their timing by moving them around in the box.

My favorite saying to my students. Look inside - Adjust out. Look High. Adjust low. Look fast. Adjust slow. If you get them to understand that concept. It alone will improve their chances of hitting a ball.

 

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If she is going 0-8, it sounds like there are other problems than just moving up a little in the box. The batters need to be able to adjust to the pitching.

 

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I agree with Klump. I agree but would like to ad my twist to the topic. Every hitter needs to be handled differently, whether it be instructing or in some cases simply leaving them alone to figure things out. Some hitters may react in a positive manner to moving up while others cannot override the mental block and won't feel comfortable with a change. I believe it has already been said but GOOD hitters are capable of making adjustments that keep them at the top of the stat sheet. A GOOD hitter will try moving up with an open mind to see if it makes a difference. As in any facet of the game, it may not be the right change at the moment. Experience will give a hitter the confidence to make their adjustments and that takes many hours of cage or live pitching time.

Personally, I like our pitchers to throw to our hitters at practice. If possible, mix the machine in with the live pitching. Girls don't get to see enough live pitching in my opinion. Pitchers need the work throwing their off-speed and spin pitches to live hitters.

If you have a hungry hitter willing to put in the time, you normally can get her ability to improve. That may not be at an Olympic level but it's the players best chance to be all she can be. There will always be a better hitter somewhere and some times we simply have to accept reality that some girls don't possess the instincts to perform at a level we think they are capable of reaching.