Practical hitting question.

Otto said:

Eric/Chris: Her HS workouts are under way and she is a senior. She has played TB since the early days. School conferences are based on enrollment numbers and we are grouped with the big schools. It is a strong region for travel ball and those kids make up the HS rosters in our conference. At the varsity level, we consistently face college committed pitching, not SEC bound or anything but pretty good day in and day out. DD's BA was third highest in the conference overall last year. Interestingly, the top two were LH as well, but both of those were slappers. Behind these were some commits to Big 10 and other D1s.

DD is looking forward to the HS season, but she is also looking forward to NOT playing in college. She has this final season before hanging it up. Some better power would be great this year if it didn't sacrifice average very much. DD is not a big heavy kid and her bat speed isn't ridiculous. The team does have some big HR hitters as well but DD has always been a line driver. I surely love working with her and will miss it very much when this is over.

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Given the specifics of the situation, particularly that this spring is it for softball, I think you'd be crazy to make any major changes trying to make her a HR threat. Maybe just look more often for the inside pitch to pull and drive when there's a runner on third with less than two outs.

GM makes a very valid point.

cannonball...What did you do? My daughter has the same problem she is RH and goes from CF to RF.

Cannonball said:

Otto, in 1998, I was the HC/AC for a very good HS Baseball Team. In fact, they were the #1 HS Team in America that year and went 40-0. We had a big, strong young man that seemed to always hit with power opposite. Still, I worked with him trying to work on driving the ball and pulling it. At one point, the HC came over and suggest that I stop working with him pulling the ball and accept that he would always go oppo. This guy, who was my mentor, allowed me to keep doing what I was doing and it paid dividends. This young man pulled a 2 run home run and then a grand slam in the state tournament over the left field fence. When he touched home plate on the grand slam, as his teammate were celebrating it, he stopped and took his hat off and tipped it to me. (I also coached 1st base.) Yes, you keep working on your hitter being able to pull the ball but you don't force anything.

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cannonball...What did you do? My daughter has the same problem she is RH and goes from CF to RF.

martianr said:

cannonball...What did you do? My daughter has the same problem she is RH and goes from CF to RF.

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Not CB, but I'm sure that he'll respond that the only way to get to Carnegie Hall is to keep practicing until a) it becomes second nature and you can't get it wrong.

For us, we worked on pitch recognition with both tee and front toss so that BB could recognize when to turn on the ball. For her, she is kind of big and so, teams stayed away from her. We knew that at some point when she had success on the outside pitch, that they would try to come in. One concept/term often used in various ways on these various sites is "connection." For me, I wanted it to actually mean the point from heel touch (front foot) to contact. For most, it is the hands/shoulder complex relationship. We worked on hip action and the hand shoulder connection on inside pitches. Then, between her junior and senior year, when teams did start really coming in, BB opened her stance some. I've posted a video of her pulling/driving a ball for her 50th collegiate home run. That was the benefit of all of this work on inside pitches. BTW, I think that the tee is great BUT, for me, front toss has to be a part of a hitting workout.

One drill that I really like for this is the Progression Drill. I've described this drill before on here. We put those flat disc cones down for oppo, up the middle and inside contact locations. Then, I distance myself behind a screen where I can put some speed on front toss but with accuracy. I throw inside, middle and oppo. BB has a target to try to hit off of that contact point. We then do some random location throws so that she has to read but then finish most of the time with the original pattern to ingrain it.

There have been many great hitters that didn't pull. Hitters that would rather inside out the inside pitch to the opposite field. Jeter would rather go to right or in situations. Could he have hit for more power? Yes , ,but he was more comfortable hitting to right field. I could make a list of great hitters that went the other way regardless of the level of play.

Gotchya Otto!

The very best to both of you during her swan song year. Lots of great lifelong memories.

Enjoy!
Chris