Hand Action at Contact

[SBFAMILY]

The strongest fingers on the hand are the ring and social fingers as they share a common tendon. This is why hanging the baby finger off the knob of the bat allows the knob/ bat to roll smoother in the bottom hand and yet still be a very strong grip.

As a right handed hitter my knuckles are off set to my bottom hand wedding ring slightly.

To feel the difference hold the bat in your hands and get to contact and through to extension and it will feel restrictive and the bat does not travel through very far.

Now repeat hanging off the baby finger using the top hand grip I described and you should feel more travel with the bat and the knob is further in the hand and you should be able to read the information on the knob of the bat at extension.

This is an old post on this site from 2010: It was posted as a reason why the RT allowed kids to grip it differently.

 

[Greenmonsters]

The strongest fingers on the hand are the ring and social fingers as they share a common tendon. This is why hanging the baby finger off the knob of the bat allows the knob/ bat to roll smoother in the bottom hand and yet still be a very strong grip.

As a right handed hitter my knuckles are off set to my bottom hand wedding ring slightly.

To feel the difference hold the bat in your hands and get to contact and through to extension and it will feel restrictive and the bat does not travel through very far.

Now repeat hanging off the baby finger using the top hand grip I described and you should feel more travel with the bat and the knob is further in the hand and you should be able to read the information on the knob of the bat at extension.

This is an old post on this site from 2010: It was posted as a reason why the RT allowed kids to grip it differently.

The smaller knob reportedly was found to be ergonomic. IIRC, the small knob was developed for use in the men's slow pitch game where the hitters were looking for greater distance and thus were seeking to marginally lengthen the bat (all SP bats are 34") to create a longer lever.

 

[FiveFrameSwing]

I suppose one could do that, but it would be a weird looking bat. In fact, that is what a golf driver actually does...it puts essentially all the weight in the head.

Thank you Pobguy. I was thinking more along the line of 'end-loaded bats' ... which have a similar look to 'un-loaded bats'.

You earlier wrote that the mass that matters for the collision is about some region around the impact point. The thought on my end was that bats that have the weight denser in that area, might offer a hitter more accomplished at making contact with the center of the sweet spot, an advantage over a bat with it's weight more uniform and over a larger area.

 

[LeftiesDad]

Thank you Pobguy. I was thinking more along the line of 'end-loaded bats' ... which have a similar look to 'un-loaded bats'.

You earlier wrote that the mass that matters for the collision is about some region around the impact point. The thought on my end was that bats that have the weight denser in that area, might offer a hitter more accomplished at making contact with the center of the sweet spot, an advantage over a bat with it's weight more uniform and over a larger area.

or just at the end of the bat, still a distance away from the sweet spot?

 

[ArmWhip]

FFS, please give up the golf analogies. The first expert that you posted was absolutely clueless. Early in his career Hogan was not competitive because he was plagued by a wicked hook, particularly when he was in contention. The consensus is that he made a grip adjustment to his left hand at address which made it a lot harder for him to excessively rollover at contact and hook the ball. He preferred to fade the ball because he was concerned with accuracy not distance. Your expert is saying that he supinated his wrist which promotes a hook.

The second guy demonstrates an elbow position that prohibits proper 'release' in golf, that's correct. But then, ironically, we have two videos of Miguel Cabrerra with his elbow in that exact position! In golf you release (roll) into contact, you square up the back of the left hand, and the palm of the right hand, to the target at contact. In baseball/softball you roll over after contact, the two releases are 90 degrees out of phase.

 

[FiveFrameSwing]

AW, I have no intention of giving up on golf analogies, ... but let's dumb it down a bit.

When you pull through contact with the bottom hand ... or hammer through contact with the bottom hand ... you end up with what in golf is referred to as a vertical hinge. That is, the bottom hand remains flat to the ground like we see here ....

The above is an example of resisting lead arm supination.

Take a look at some of the reverse top-hand drills sometimes shown here at DFP and you'll see the same anti-horizontal hinge action. Need to be careful when performing such drills that you don't teach the bottom hand improperly.

It's a common issue ... leads to an "around" swing, chicken-winging and lack of extension. Once addressed the top-hand is free to get the job done.

 

[straightleg]

The king of save and paste (using other posters daughters).
I find it morally unfit to repost someone's else's kid without that person's permission, if they did not post it first in that thread.
This is Wellphat's dd and he does not post here anymore...Anyone wonder why?




SL

 

[00fpdaddy]

Solving F=ma is exactly how one solves the problem of the ball-bat collision. However, one must do that treating the bat as a non-rigid object. The way I do it is to divide up the bat into thin slices, say 0.5" thick. Think of the adjacent slices attached to each other by springs. Whenever one slice moves relative to the adjacent slices, the springs exert a force on that slice (and in turn the slice exerts an equal and opposite force on the adjacent slices). So, how does the ball-bat collision work in that scenario. The ball hits one of the slices, exerting a force on that slice. It then starts to move, thereby exerting forces on adjacent slices. The adjacent slices start to move and exert a force on the slices adjacent to them. etc. etc. The ball interacts with only a small part of the bat, which then interacts with other small parts of the bat, until eventually the whole bat is moving in some manner. By looking at the video I referred to earlier, you can see that the part of the bat the ball impacts moves first, then the movement "ripples" up the bat in a sort of wave until it reaches the knob, then reflects back down, etc. etc. The distant slices don't even "see" the ball, they only "see" the adjacent slices. The stiffness of the "springs" connecting one slice to another is a property of the material. Each of these forces results in an acceleration of whatever slice is experiencing the force, according to F=ma, where m is the mass of the slice.

I have probably told you more than you really want to know. The key point is realizing that the bat is not rigid, so that when one end is hit, the other end does not immediately begin to move. So, F=ma is still valid, but one must be very careful how one applies it.

Dr. N., when u refer to slices of the bats, in my simple mind I think of bat layers. When composites came out, they made layers. Different companies use different materials, weaves and resins for their paticular bat. When these weaves and resins get broken down (bp, game use, breaking in a bat) the bat becomes "hot" 'broken-in", well hit balls go farther and/or faster thru the holes due to trampoline effect as the bat manufactures call it. So even with a girl with poor mechaniques gets squares up on a ball 1 out of 10 abs, and uses a broken in bat, the ball will fly

In your studies of bat speed , does the angular swing path or whatever term it is come into play? As your were speaking of your tango blog, 2 people same bat speed, but what if one contiunally squares up the ball but the other does not. Say 8 for 10, the other 2 for 10 on squaring the ball. Timing comes into play big time and where the collision is at poc.

Sorry for being all over the place with this post, thanks for contributing to the forum. Not making fun, did or do u play baseball/softball?

 

[pobguy]

Dr. N., when u refer to slices of the bats, in my simple mind I think of bat layers. When composites came out, they made layers. Different companies use different materials, weaves and resins for their paticular bat. When these weaves and resins get broken down (bp, game use, breaking in a bat) the bat becomes "hot" 'broken-in", well hit balls go farther and/or faster thru the holes due to trampoline effect as the bat manufactures call it. So even with a girl with poor mechaniques gets squares up on a ball 1 out of 10 abs, and uses a broken in bat, the ball will fly

In your studies of bat speed , does the angular swing path or whatever term it is come into play? As your were speaking of your tango blog, 2 people same bat speed, but what if one contiunally squares up the ball but the other does not. Say 8 for 10, the other 2 for 10 on squaring the ball. Timing comes into play big time and where the collision is at poc.

Sorry for being all over the place with this post, thanks for contributing to the forum. Not making fun, did or do u play baseball/softball?

Let me see if I can answer your questions. First, the break-in effect with composite bats is real and I suspect most players know about it. Your description of how it works is spot-on. Organizations such as ASA, who regulate the performance of non-wood bats, had to modify their test procedures to account for "ABI" (accelerated break-in, more commonly known as "rolling").

Regarding bat speed: As far as the ball-bat collision is concerned, the only bat speed that matters is the speed of the bat at the impact point. It doesn't really matter how the bat got there (whether through linear or angular path). The discussion at the Tango blog assumed that both batter squared up in the same way.

I still play in a senior slow-pitch softball league. In my youth, I was a pretty good outfielder, but these days I prefer 1B. And anticipating your next question, I don't think about physics when I play!

 

[FiveFrameSwing]

The above is not Wellphyt’s daughter. She is an example of someone along her development path that at that point in her journey served as an example of resisting the natural roll/supination of the lead arm. What some find “morally unfit” is for someone to continue to post a demonstration of a drill after it has been pointed out that it causes this particular issue. Morality aside … let’s all try to stick to the topic of hitting.