Can't hit off real pitchers

nixxy311 said:

So DD is taking hitting lessons and she does great in lessons. She can swing fast and her bat speed is way above average for her age. She can hit in the cages, she can hit off a pitching machine.
When she faces actual pitchers, she forgets how to hit.
She loses everything she's been taught, swings too slowly and is always hitting to the right side of the field.

She's facing faster pitchers now - she recently moved from 12U to 14U this season.

In hitting her instructor will throw inside/outside pitches to get her to be able to hit those.
In her first TB tournament she only struck out once and that was a called strike - she tends to let the outside pitches go. She's good at making contact.
She just isn't swinging fast enough when she makes contact.
We are going to ask her hitting instructor for some more tips but any ideas on stuff she can try?
I'm not sure if it's just mental during games that she is thinking about too much and forgets everything.
It's really frustrating to watch her ground out to second all the time :/

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Is she really swinging "too slowly" or is she not getting started early enough? She needs to be getting into her "gather" as the pitcher gets to the top of her windmill. Start slow and early. If she starts too late
everything will be rushed and her mechanics will break down.

If she isn't getting enough reps in practice against live pitching perhaps she can gently tell the coach(es) she would like to get some more practice via live pitching.

T work...soft toss...machines...lessons...they all have their place. Ultimately, there's no substitute for hitting off live pitching. Not just hitting, but an AT-BAT where decisions have to be made. In the absence of a pitcher, I simulate this by throwing front toss with a ball/strike/out count, hitting spots, and judging the reaction on a full-size ballfield. Even so, it can take DD a few games and ABs to get going at the start of the season, and it takes constant work to keep it dialed in.

My 12U DD is slumping right now too. Says she's worried about striking out, but when she swings, she's swinging for the fence. Was watching her yesterday taking front toss in the cage and she was stepping out with her back foot even though she was making good contact. I pointed it out to her coach and he worked on getting that corrected. I don't know where it came from because up until about a month ago, she wasn't doing it. Granted she's been HBP 4 times in the last 2 weeks, but just bouncers that hit her in the foot as she was trying to jump away. She might also be pulling her head because she's swinging so hard. I try not to mess with her swing too much because I don't want signals getting crossed between me and her coach. She got moved up to the 3 hole, so she may be feeling the pressure from that as well, especially when she comes up with 2 outs. BP has been nonexistent the past 2 or 3 weeks with the tourneys and league, but they got back into it yesterday. They usually do live pitching against her pitchers and her coach's 14U pitchers, so hopefully it gets things straightened out.

DD used to be the exact same. When I talked to her about it for the 127th time, she finally admitted that she’s a phenom in the cage or at practice because she wasn’t worried about messing up. There were no consequences for a swing and a miss or a pop up or a slow roller to short. But in games, she knew it hurt the team if she didn’t hit the ball right, so she tried to be careful and not make a mistake in games. The trouble is when you think about not messing up you’re inadvertently thinking about messing up, and when that’s all you think about then it’s all you wind up doing. Her fear of letting the team down was causing her to let the team down. That was an “ah-ha” moment for her.

I told her I didn’t care what her batting average was as long as she hit the ball hard. That took a little pressure off for games, so I reapplied the pressure elsewhere. We started working on situational hitting in the cage every time instead of being in there just to hit with no context. And when she looked at a low-and-away strike three go by like it was a turd in the punch bowl, guess what we worked on incessantly during the next cage session? I also have the luxury of having a cage at home with a LOT of room for her to run if she doesn’t do it right. Maybe I’m an ogre, but she has learned that the consequences for “messing up” in a game are now far less than if she doesn’t execute at home. She seems to have turned a corner now, hitting .600 this season, just hitting the ball hard and letting it play out.


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TexAg1998 said:

DD used to be the exact same. When I talked to her about it for the 127th time, she finally admitted that she’s a phenom in the cage or at practice because she wasn’t worried about messing up. There were no consequences for a swing and a miss or a pop up or a slow roller to short. But in games, she knew it hurt the team if she didn’t hit the ball right, so she tried to be careful and not make a mistake in games. The trouble is when you think about not messing up you’re inadvertently thinking about messing up, and when that’s all you think about then it’s all you wind up doing. Her fear of letting the team down was causing her to let the team down. That was an “ah-ha” moment for her.

I told her I didn’t care what her batting average was as long as she hit the ball hard. That took a little pressure off for games, so I reapplied the pressure elsewhere. We started working on situational hitting in the cage every time instead of being in there just to hit with no context. And when she looked at a low-and-away strike three go by like it was a turd in the punch bowl, guess what we worked on incessantly during the next cage session? I also have the luxury of having a cage at home with a LOT of room for her to run if she doesn’t do it right. Maybe I’m an ogre, but she has learned that the consequences for “messing up” in a game are now far less than if she doesn’t execute at home. She seems to have turned a corner now, hitting .600 this season, just hitting the ball hard and letting it play out.

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That’s excellent. Great approach to the problem, really like the idea of taking pressure off in the game environment and reapplying it in training.

She does catching practice during team practices? Our pitchers and catchers work on that stuff on their own time. If the team is hitting so are they.

grcsftbll said:

She does catching practice during team practices? Our pitchers and catchers work on that stuff on their own time. If the team is hitting so are they.

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No they are just doing live pitching for the other players and for rec, we only have two pitchers (the one who was pitching and my DD) and only two catchers (DD and another girl). I don't know why he didn't switch catchers to let DD get a chance but the other catcher was doing fly ball drills in the OF. It's just rec so I'm not as concerned there. When they do TB practice, I think it gets switched up more since we have 3 pitchers and 4 catchers (DD doesn't pitch for the TB team). We haven't had a chance to do a ton of field practice due to the great Georgia weather

I took a look at a video of one of her at-bats and I can see her moving her front foot out of the batter's box and stretching out for the ball - something her hitting instructor saw so they will probably work on that this week. Sadly she doesn't do that in lessons so it's harder to fix :/

I spent the last two years working as a volunteer assistant for DDs high school team. Other than DD, this is a very inexperienced team. With very few exceptions, most of these players have only played one or two years of rec ball, and some never played organized softball of any type. With limited time over the winter, some of them started to show some promise in the cage. But when we had DD pitch live to them, you could tell that they simply were not ready (not implying your DD isn't, just making a point). I started doing two things that ultimately seemed to help them during games.

1) While DD was getting her work in during the week (warm ups, etc.), we always had one player standing in the batters box and timing the pitches. Not swinging, but timing the pitches.
2) We also had a player "on deck", also timing the pitches. Then they would alternate. During games, I always made it a point for our on deck hitters to time the pitcher just like in the videos below. In fact, at the start of innings, we typically had our first three hitters all timing her up.

In our situation it was just a matter of developing a comfort level against live pitching. The more pitches you see (even if you don't swing), the more prepared you will be in the box. DD is not a stud pitcher, but she is comparable to any other pitcher in our district. So by standing in against her at practice, they were not caught off guard by any other pitcher they faced.

The biggest thing I learned my first time through TB is that most of my former players at this age were timing off of the pitcher's arm motion versus the ball speed. I have had great success using, what I call, "the board." I can talk all day until I'm blue in the face but few recognize the importance of timing the ball versus timing when to launch. I get continuously flamed for my theory which is why I don't post often on the hitting threads. So, if you want help, PM me.

YOCOACH said:

The biggest thing I learned my first time through TB is that most of my former players at this age were timing off of the pitcher's arm motion versus the ball speed. I have had great success using, what I call, "the board." I can talk all day until I'm blue in the face but few recognize the importance of timing the ball versus timing when to launch. I get continuously flamed for my theory which is why I don't post often on the hitting threads. So, if you want help, PM me.

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That is a good point YOCOACH..... One must launch the swing when the ball says to.... not when the mechanics tell you to.


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