Bunting hand position

canyonjoe said:

I am amazed at how many hitters on our 18U team really can't bunt.

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This is what I see as well. If you actually track bunting statistics you would realize how poor almost every player is at bunting. Lefty slappers tend to do better as they practice it more.

The irony is almost every player (and parent) that I have talked to about bunting thinks that they are really good at it.

At the upper level when the pitchers are throwing gas poor technique becomes an issue.

My $.02:

The most important aspect of bunting is not hand or bat position...it is the mind set of the batter.

When a player works with a good coach (like Ken), the coach is going to talk about the mental approach to bunting. Is this a sacrifice bunt? Is this an attempt to get on base? Each of the situations requires a different mindset.

But, the average TB, HS or rec coach doesn't even touch the mental aspect of bunting. So, the kid gets confused about what she is trying to do, and then does nothing.

What I see too often is a kid thinking she is "bunting for a hit" when really is supposed to sacrifice the runner over. As soon as the kid starts thinking "I got to get to 1B...", she has already failed.

to piggy-back sluggers comments:

how you hold the bat is not important to me,
but bat angle IS.

I've always taught that when bunting in fastpitch,
the bat angle must be so that the barrel is always higher than the knob.
Also, slightly tipped forward toward the pitcher.

Flat bats bunt foul.
Dropped heads bunt foul also.
These are me observations.

Does DFP agree?
I'm just curious...

Natasha Watley was a pretty ok bunter. Her hand position gives her great bat control and her footwork dropping a bunt for a base hit is not bad either. She is our model bunter for 14-18u. Right or left handed, we drive all of our players to become adept at sacrifice, suicide, "sneaky", push and pull back techniques. They are all tools to be used at the right time and all have nuances that need to be learned. Using a pinch grip generally does not provide the flexibility and control required. The technique described by Gunner does. https://goo.gl/images/v6TSFE

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GunnerShotgun said:

As a coach you are obligated to seek out best practices and teach them to your players. That's what a good coach does. Never quit learning, you owe it to your players.

The comment about how high level teams and players do things is important. The stakes are large at the highest levels as the pressure to win and be successful is huge. BS gets filtered out quickly.

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"Best practice" is quite often a matter of opinion. I learned the technique of keeping fingers behind the bat from a guy who played major league baseball doing it that way. To me, a professional ball player has at least as much credibility as anything else. Further, what may work for one person might not work for another. Generally speaking, good coaches also adapt to what their players do well, and don't mindlessly shoehorn them into their own personal vision. Whatever technique a kid uses to bunt, if it works for her, I'll find something else to worry about. How many threads are there on DFP about players who were screwed up because a coach forced their opinion on how something should be done on a player who was already doing it well?

Strike2 said:

"Best practice" is quite often a matter of opinion.

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It's not a matter of opinion, by definition.

Strike2 said:

I learned the technique of keeping fingers behind the bat from a guy who played major league baseball doing it that way. To me, a professional ball player has at least as much credibility as anything else.

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I and others have mentioned how POOR bunting is at the MLB level. This is due to a couple of reasons and one being the poor technique that they use. Why you would teach a method that achieves poor results is baffling.

Strike2 said:

Further, what may work for one person might not work for another. Generally speaking, good coaches also adapt to what their players do well, and don't mindlessly shoehorn them into their own personal vision. Whatever technique a kid uses to bunt, if it works for her, I'll find something else to worry about. How many threads are there on DFP about players who were screwed up because a coach forced their opinion on how something should be done on a player who was already doing it well?

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Straw man much? No one said anything about forcing players to bunt with a specific form in any capacity. There was a discussion on what best practices were for bunting. I don't care is a player uses her teeth to hold the bat during a bunt as long as she can get it down at an effective rate. The question becomes if they can't get the bunt down at an efficient rate what is the best practice for doing so.

As a coach during game time I love opposing teams that utilize poor bunting techniques. It gives us a small advantage when we can do something well and the other team cannot.

Corlay...I would not agree with your observations for experienced bunters but I can understand why you would think that if you haven't seen many good bunters. Whatley, Lowe and Champion all used level bat angle and they are among the best bunters ever. I teach level and have several with BA over .600 on bunts. They only pop up over their head height on 6% of their bunts and they still reach 1st on half of those. Granted they practice bunting about 50 balls a week so I'm not saying it's easy.

sluggers said:

My $.02:

The most important aspect of bunting is not hand or bat position...it is the mind set of the batter.

When a player works with a good coach (like Ken), the coach is going to talk about the mental approach to bunting. Is this a sacrifice bunt? Is this an attempt to get on base? Each of the situations requires a different mindset.

But, the average TB, HS or rec coach doesn't even touch the mental aspect of bunting. So, the kid gets confused about what she is trying to do, and then does nothing.

What I see too often is a kid thinking she is "bunting for a hit" when really is supposed to sacrifice the runner over. As soon as the kid starts thinking "I got to get to 1B...", she has already failed.

Click to expand...

Agree completely with the above. Big difference between bunting to get on base, and a sac to move the runners. I see many many times in obvious sac situations where the batter is still trying to get the "perfect bunt" down and get on base, when all they need to do is put it in play.

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As for why the pinch technique is sub-optimal for softball (in my opinion) it has to do with mass and strength. A softball is heavier/has a greater mass than a baseball. A softball bat is generally lighter in weight than a baseball bat, so the differential in the moving object and the object doing the "receiving" of that force is greater in baseball than in softball. Think about hitting two drumsticks together versus a branch and a twig. The baseball bat is less likely to "give" when struck by the baseball, even if you're pinching it.

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I have not only found this to be true, but I have had girls torque their thumb badly, doing the pinch method which then created a long lasting reluctance of bunting. I have never had a player hurt her hand grasping the bat with her whole hand, fingers towrd the pitcher. There has been a great reluctance to accept this by former baseball players.

In an MLB all star game, I saw a national league pitcher bunt, holding the bat almost vertically with a choke hold on the bat, only exposing about 6" of barrel to the oncoming pitch. Very successful at the plate. It was a bit extreme, but you get the point.

We have a bunting station as an everyday part of practice. I teach the "baseball style" as Gunner describes it but I'd just describe it as something that my players have had success with for 3 decades. In fact, we are known as a school that can hit and bunt so you have to be able to defend both. I want a "pinch" just before the area where the bat flattens out in the barrel. I want the other hand about two inches up from the knob. I don't want the velocity of the pitch at contact to jerk the bat back resulting in a foul ball.

How do we coach it? We start with a lite flite machine and those soft baseballs. We get rotated into the bunting position and a feeder feeds the ball and the bunter catches the ball with their top hand. We do this slowly at first and then turn this into a more rapid fire feed. In that way, the bunter has to be able to bend at the knees or slightly lift to get the bat (their hands) in the correct position to bunt. BTW, I want that bat at a 45 degree angle when they start. (So hands pretend to be at a 45 for this beginning drill.) I want the bat "up" as opposed to being middle to down wrt body position.

From the first sequence, we now take the player's game bat and they bunt one handed off of the same lite flite machine. They are to catch the ball with their hand with the bat in the way.

From there, they are allowed to use two hands on the bat and learn how to adjust with knees and the knob hand on bunts. The other or top hand always catches the ball.