Staying inside the ball and the outside pitch

Just some observations from shooting some buckets of balls at DD from the pitching machine today.

She seemed to be extending arms too soon, casting, if you will. We'd hit off tee before that, and no casting. Finally, I had the bright idea to aim the balls inside. Instructed her to catch it early (mainly just didn't want her connecting late). The casting disappeared. It also cured a back foot issue. On the outside pitches, the back foot was sliding away from home plate instead of going to the toe w/ shoelaces toward pitcher. It was weird.

Not sure of my point here, except to suggest that ...

(1) the outside pitch is the devil for a lot of young hitters. It's not hard for them to hit it, but hard for them to hit it well.
(2) young hitters should get more comfortable with the idea of hitting the ball close to their bodies. Many just want the ball away from them, at places where they can't hit it as well. I'm thinking many young hitters need to stand closer to the plate.
(3) Good hitters might get hit by pitches more because they're the ones most comfortable crowding the plate.

Any truth to those theories and/or random thoughts?

I would say you are spot on with all 3.

Many players that I deal with are caught in a catch-22 of sorts until they really get the rotational hitting. If you keep your hands in you need to be closer to the plate, but in order to be closer to the plate you need to be able to keep your hands in. They either stand close but don't keep the hands in, or keep the hands in but won't get close enough.

The pitching in our area, and level, is a bit spotty so most of the girls don't feel comfortable getting in close so it's a real battle here between the physical and mental game of hitting.

Thanks for the comments, BJ. ... I'm going to work more on having my DD hit inside pitches both from tee, front toss and machine. I think I've hit on something.

My daughter gets in pretty close to the plate and gets whacked fairly frequently. Her pitching coach focuses a lot on inside pitches and being able to crush them to take that away from the pitcher and forces pitches back to the outside. He throws at her inside and then sneaks in outside pitches so she gets used to it going in to out and to let that outside pitch get a little deeper so she drives it to the opposite field.

She doesn't mind taking one for the team and isn't scared of taking one because of where she stands. So I kind of agree with all three points.

Take a look at Bama and Ricketts in the WCWS. They got up on that plate in game 2 and Ricketts hit 5 batters...