obbay
Banned
That's what I've seen too.My issue with the elbow down is that many hitters will start with it down then drop it even more creating bat drag.
I am typically working with non-travel, U12s and U14s and I find that sometimes you have to exaggerate the direction in order to get the desired result. I also find that for girls who only play ball in the spring, they have a tendency toward leading with both elbows and bat drag. They also need to relearn everything every spring.
As far as the girls I work with, I would call Vlad's swing an example of elbow up. The humerus doesn't need to be parallel with the ground for me to call it elbow up.
As far as adding time to the decision making process, in my case it is the exception to the rule that I have batters up against pitchers that are that fast and have that kind of control where a half-second would make a difference. still to me it's cheating the batter, perhaps enabling some semblance of success at the cost of power. Again, I'm not up against top level pitching here so the level and age may be the issue. but when I look at siggy's clips, it seems to me that those women aren't pre-slotting.
Interesting thing- after reading this thread, I pulled out Ted Williams' The Science of hitting video. The hitters he shows (1972 I think) all keep that rear elbow fairly low, but they don't specifically discuss the elbow position as a critical element of the swing.
Then again. the "science of hitting" was relatively young when that video was made.