Fixing long fly balls

My daughter is hitting a lot of long fly balls. She has hit 3 out of the park (she's only 5'1 and 14) which is great. The problem is other teams are playing her very deep...and some fields do not have a fence. The result is a lot of long fly outs.

My daughter gets a lot if lift on her ball, but I definitely wouldn't say she is under it. She isn't popping out. These are solid contact hits but they can be high and if they are, they can be caught. I don't want to mess around too much because she is obviously hitting the ball well. How can she adjust to get more line drives though...especially when we really just need a single?

Thanks...

Every so often I have a long bp with my daughter and the goal is hard ground balls. Only real mechanical change is she will split grip about an inch for the first dozen or so. After that it is just her thought of drive it up the middle.
I must say line drive/hard ground ball 100 times a week. She injured 1 pitcher, 2 short stops, and a 2nd basemen this year (and her old dad). Ya feel terrible for them, but you know you're doing right when they can't react or handle the ball.

The thought of hit a homerun equals fly outs. The thought of line drives hard ground balls equal hits and occasional homeruns.

What bat is she using?

I agree that you can't complain too hard about long fly balls. Is she batting in a position, so that she is getting RBIs?

Do you have any videos of her?

It is a good problem to have. Though with OF playing so deep there are usually a lot of gaps for those line drives she does hit and a lot of open space for those dinks that do fall in that might be caught with hitters that aren't as good as your DD.

You can devote some BP time to situational hitting. Justin Stone had a series on that in his "building a high level swing series" and you may or may not be able to find a clip of it somewhere in the internet. That is take a small portion of your BP to work on -
-hitting sac flys
-hitting GBs to the right side
-shorting up swing to put it in play
-etc.

It shouldn't be the focus but it's just another tool to work on.

I agree with RHC on hitting line drive thought process.
Without seeing video. Does your DD dip her back shoulder then swing. I see a lot of hitters who dip rear shoulder then swing hit fly balls. When your younger, balls hit in the outfield may have been hits. Now high fly balls in outfield are outs. The swing will drop rear shoulder that pitch height will dictate. Example more level rear shoulder on higher pitched balls.

Look at video of her hitting to. When the top of her bat is still behind her does it arch or circle straight to the ball from her stance? kind of one swing move. I see a lot of 14ish power hitters that the barrel drops behind them and then they swing level around their body. Kind of two moves. They hit with power vs average pitching, then really struggle vs good pitching.

Chaos42 said:

My daughter is hitting a lot of long fly balls. She has hit 3 out of the park (she's only 5'1 and 14) which is great. The problem is other teams are playing her very deep...and some fields do not have a fence. The result is a lot of long fly outs.

My daughter gets a lot if lift on her ball, but I definitely wouldn't say she is under it. She isn't popping out. These are solid contact hits but they can be high and if they are, they can be caught. I don't want to mess around too much because she is obviously hitting the ball well. How can she adjust to get more line drives though...especially when we really just need a single?

Thanks...

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Using front toss (not side toss) or live pitching, have her attempt to hit line drives. Every time she hits anything but a line drive she has to hit the other extreme. For example, if she hits a ground ball her next hit must be a fly ball. Then back to the line drives.

In summary, keep hitting lines drives until she mistakenly hits either a fly ball or a ground ball. If she hits a fly ball, next hit must be a ground ball, and back and forth until she's consistent with the line drives.

With her ability to hit long fly balls, though, I would focus as much on hitting the gaps as any other skill. Especially right center, or deep right field.

I have the current team problem of hitting too many ground balls. I worked on long fly balls last season to help with the ground ball problem. It often benefits average batters when you cause the outfield to back up.

Clearly, the answer is...MORE POWER!! Hit it over their heads or over the fence EVERY TIME!!!

I might try setting up a tee about 3' 4' away from a fence. Have your DD hit balls into the fence. See if balls go high, low or straight into the fence. Adjust as needed. A lot can be learned about a swing by just hitting into a fence. Learned that from Straightleg, Howard/Hitter and Sbfamily.

Eric F said:

Clearly, the answer is...MORE POWER!! Hit it over their heads or over the fence EVERY TIME!!!

Click to expand...

Pretty sure you're being facetious but power hitters don't have to hit it over EVERY TIME to be game changers.