Thoughts??

DRDRODD said:

Can you elaborate on educated hands? Out of sequence in which way? I have heard the the saying but I am not very clear on what is meant by it..... She is 14 will be 15 in two months.

Edit: From what I understand about about educated hands is just the ability to get the barrel to the ball in different zones?

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Work=wins said:

What I believe are educated hands is when/how/ intent of the hands. Your definition is close to mine.But the barrel is not what the hands hold. Take a look again at your DD video.Key in on the hands. Look at some pro swings. See if you see it.

What does your DD do with her hands ? Ask her what her intent is ? Is it just to get them through? Be fast? Hold onto the bat? When she figures out her hands her sequence improve 10 fold.

The beginning of your thread started with hitting inside pitches to right . That tells me the hands don't know their first true job in the sequence .

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DRDRODD said:

I would say that my DD is opposite of what you are working on with your daughter. She tends to lay the bat flatter on the middle to out than she does on the inner half. The first pitch was over the heart of the plate (trying for inner half) and the other to were on the inner half. I find with her if she flattens the bat to much on the inner half pitches she tends to rotate and swing around the body causing her to hit around the ball. The drill that was being performed was intended to help her stay inside the inner half pitches.

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DRDRODD said:

Pattar

I would like to hear more from you about the drill.... what are your thoughts about what she was trying to accomplish during the hitting session?

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pattar said:

First I am a Sox fan and when I think of "inside-outing" the ball I think of Jeter.. (Boggs used to do it too and I didn't like him growing up)

Second, your kid looks very athletic and strong and I like her swing, so I am nitpicking. Now I realize the intent of the drill was to try and keep her hands inside the ball and she was doing that, but
to me you are promoting a swing which is going to lack power. Looks like she hit 1 of 3 balls solid (first one) in those videos. The other two were "slices", especially the third swing. Was she able
to drive the ball hard consistently when you were doing this? Here is another MLB hitting an inside pitch (Trout):

https://twitter.com/MattAntonelli9/status/944400878764806144

That pitch to Trout looked to way inside, maybe even a ball yet he was able to drive it hard and fair.

Again I realize this was a drill with the idea of keeping her hands inside the ball, and if she is able to (in a game situation) do this and drive the ball with power then keep at it.

That said, what I would do is give her a goal of hitting the inside pitch hard to the upper left corner of the cage. Even better, if you can get to a field, work her inside
with the goal of driving the ball and keeping it fair. If she is turning the barrel correctly (not around her spine as you mentioned correctly is an issue) and using her body to keep her hands inside the ball
she should be able to drive the ball hard and fair.

Matt Antonelli does a decent job (imo) of explaining it in this video below. He mentions what he thinks is key to staying inside the ball at around the 11:15 point in the video.



Again, the most important thing to me is to get her to use her hands and body to drive the inside pitch hard with power. If what you are doing is working, then stick with it. At the end
of the day we can do drills till our face is blue but if they don't produce results what good are they? As we used to say in bball, "ball don't lie"

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DRDRODD said:

I believe that you are focusing on the result of the swing to much and not what needs to happen to hit an inside pitch oppo with pop. Every swing she takes in that facility is recorded on hittrax and believe it are not even the two balls she cut was within 10% of her max EV so they were hit hard. The reason why I posted the video in the practical threads is because I believe that it was a practical way to teach someone the feeling of getting inside of the ball on the inside pitch. In all actuality we are taking about a couple of milliseconds of difference between pulling the pitch and keeping it fair and hitting it oppo. You wrote that you would give her the goal of driving the outside pitch to the upper pull side corner of the cage. That is the ultimate goal to do that but when a hitter can not connect the dots on how to do that because they continually hook the ball what works to get them to understand that the hands need to get out front or what do you believe the hands need to do to hit that pitch? When she had the goal to hit the ball to the pull side corner she was able to do it but not by getting inside of it. She would typically be falling back or what some may call pulling off of the pitch. I found that giving her the goal of going center to oppo gave her the feel of getting inside. I have the feeling that you think that the drill has a detrimental effect on the swing or at least could have. That is what I am really looking for from the forum. I do think that this probably isn't a drill that anyone should use with their DD especially the ones that do not have at least a basic understanding of turning the barrel.

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rdbass said:

Is this your DD normal set up in the box. Reason I ask, seems to be standing further away from the plate than I would expect. If working on inside pitch it would help if your DD was standing a little closer to the plate. I would think she does in a game. Again, I could be wrong and this is her normal set up. From this set up I would have guess an outside pitch would give her problems. Also, why does it seem like your DD is off balance. After her swings she seems to fall towards the plate. Another thing...why not try and hit the ball where it's pitched. I'm not a fan of trying to hit an inside pitch to right field. Try moving closer to the plate and work on practicing to keep the ball fair.

Front shoulder is 'flying out'.

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