At what age does slap hitting start to loose effectiveness?

[CoachJD]

It takes a good 2 years for a girl to become a serviceable slapper. It takes another 2 years for a player to learn how and to become a really solid triple threat at the plate.

I've seen this or something like it a few times, but I'm curious about what a "year" really means. How many at bats in games? How much practice time? At what point does practice time lose effectiveness and more and more live games are needed?

"Two years" can mean a lot of different things. Is that two years if a girl is playing spring, summer, fall and taking private lessons all winter?

 

[Ajaywill]

Not a coach, but an umpire who has worked lots of games over the years.

From my observations, good slap hitting with even moderate speed can remain a threat throughout a player's career.

Lots of good points in this thread, but was hasn't been mentioned is that a legitimate slapper can also get on base by forcing errors.
The infielders know that the player is a slapper and is fast and will put the ball in play, so they will sometimes rush the process of fielding and/or throwing the ball which can lead to errors.

 

[Sparky Guy]

I've seen this or something like it a few times, but I'm curious about what a "year" really means. How many at bats in games? How much practice time? At what point does practice time lose effectiveness and more and more live games are needed?

"Two years" can mean a lot of different things. Is that two years if a girl is playing spring, summer, fall and taking private lessons all winter?

A year is what you mentioned. Tons of work at practice year round combined with game reps. They can't work in too much. The hard part is finding a coach and parents at the younger levels who have the patience to let them develop. It takes game reps for them to learn which "tool" to pull out of the bag. Hard slap, soft, chopper, swing away, blooper and where to hit the ball to depending on the defense.

The OP's DD is 8 and less than a year into it. She has not scratched the surface of slapping. The women you see at the WCWS and pro league have been working their craft before the OP's DD was born. That's why they make it look easy.

 

[FP26]

I think it depends on the type of ball we are talking about and the amount of effort/desire the player has in becoming good at it. When we played 10u/12u ball locally we had a couple of players that would soft slap and bunt and had very high on-base percentages. It was more because of poor defense than any appreciable skill on their end. Heck, even a righty that was good at bunting and had above average speed could reach base at a high percentage. As the defenses became better, it became more difficult for these players to reach base unless they really honed that skill. In my opinion, if slapping is done well, it can be dangerous at any age. But if the player doesn't work at it, 12u is the best you can hope for.

 

[Ken Krause]

Not a coach, but an umpire who has worked lots of games over the years.

From my observations, good slap hitting with even moderate speed can remain a threat throughout a player's career.

Lots of good points in this thread, but was hasn't been mentioned is that a legitimate slapper can also get on base by forcing errors.
The infielders know that the player is a slapper and is fast and will put the ball in play, so they will sometimes rush the process of fielding and/or throwing the ball which can lead to errors.

I agree with Ajaywill. You don't have to have killer speed to use the slap effectively -if you can also hit for power. If all you can do is slap or bunt it's far less effective.

That said, I wouldn't turn a righty around to be a lefty slapper unless she had much better than average speed. But as a general rule I teach all but the true turtle lefties to slap. It gives them something else in their arsenal, another way to attack the defense, and sometimes even helps them get out of a power hitting slump.

Keep in mind that not all slaps have to go soft and on the ground anymore. If you can loft a line drive over the infield and in front of the outfield that works too. You don't need speed for that, just bat control. Combine that with the ability to hit to the gaps and lay down the bunt and you become pretty tough to defend.

 

[marriard]

If you have elite acceleration it never loses effectiveness.If you are triple threat you don't necessarily have to be the fastest, but it sure helps.

Our best slapper in only 4th on our team around all four bases, but from base to base I have only seen only one girl faster and she was all-freshman at a power 5 D1 school last season. So, so fast and so, so quick.

She is is only in her second season of slapping, so she has mainly been working on footwork and making contact to keep the ball fair. She is just now learning to vary strength and direction, bounce them, bloop them and then will more onto hitting for power as well as well as 'just getting it down'

Just getting it down makes her a .500 hitter in 14U-A. At showcases college coaches will stop to watch her play (which gets our team more looks). She scares the hell out of very good teams when she comes to bat.

 

[Gambler Bob]

Is she naturally left handed?

I am going to be in the minority here. You said she been working at this for 9 months and she is 8 yrs old. I would probably teach her how to swing normally first then I would teach her how to bunt before teaching her to slap and please don't tell me you did that at 6 and 7 and by the time she was 8 she had great swing mechanics and could lay a bunt down in her sleep so you started teaching her to slap. You said great speed does not run in the family so if by the time she is 13 or 14 she is average speed that would be the answer to your question at 14U and 16U if you can't beat out quality throw slap hitting will start to loose its effectiveness. Now if she gets really good at slapping and she is fast then she can slap hit forever but I would love to see her actually learn to hit.You want to be able to drive the ball to the gap and place it really well so that they cant crash in before the pitch because you can bloop it over the infield and the outfield could not cheat in because you can gap it or hit it over their heads and in my opinion it is easier to learn to swing first, plus then if you grow big and stronger versus small and skinny you might not have to worry about slapping if you can just hit bombs all day but I don't know what the family genes are like.

She throws right handed. She has never batted right handed in her life. From the time both my kids have been able to swing a bat I taught them both to bat left handed. We work on all aspects of hitting during batting practice, swinging normal, bunting and slap hitting. She hits very well for a 8 year old, and struggles a bit with bunting and slap hitting. As of now her defense and pitching are developing faster than her offense.

 

[Karchify]

The slap hitting is definitely what you would call a work in progress. She can do it well in batting practice but come game time she struggles to put the ball between the lines, lots of foul balls. No big deal, she is only 8 years old. She also enjoys practicing slap hitting, it usually takes about 10 pitches in batting practice for her to get her foot work down correctly and keep her hand high. That is where the difference is come game time, you don't get 10 practice pitches in a game.

Now that I gave a little backround, back to the original question. Does slap hitting loose its effectiveness at older ages?

The 3 cases in which they loose effectiveness IMO are 1) Speed decreases and/or 2) Skill level development stops or becomes stagnated (i.e. slappers go through same pregame as hitters and coaches wonder why they cant get on base.), and/or 3) They get in their own heads and don't want to be a slapper (grass is always greener and they see slapping as weak or too much work).

I believe building skill is the key to slapping, which is not done at BP, it's done through progressions, where you practice aiming the ball in different positions, soft slapping off the tee into a net in a crossed over position first, then off the tee running, then crossed over with front toss, lastly test your skill in BP. Good slappers will continue to do these progressions all through college (every practice multiple times per week, requires high coach involvement). At early ages, I would have a strong focus (50% of my reps or more) on drag bunting (again with a progression - crossed over [bat over plate], then crossed over [bat high], then drag bunt run toward P, then full 3 steps toward 1B, etc).

You have an advantage with a lefty hitter because when you turn a hitter around (going R to L), your weak link is bases loaded and smart teams that play the OF way in, Hard hits take a year or two. But on the other side without great speed you will be on the other side of bang-bang plays that a faster runner would get. You also loose some of the freak out overthrows that come when a third baseman (or basewoman) fields the ball, looks up and freaks out because the runner is 3/4 of the way down the line and then proceeds to air mail the ball to the fence. lol

 

[Sparky Guy]

your weak link is bases loaded and smart teams that play the OF way in, Hard hits take a year or two.

Had team do that to my lead-off slapper with runners on 2nd and 3rd. She put it in the LC gap on a nice flyball over their heads. They stopped pulling in the OF after that.

 

[Karchify]

Had team do that to my lead-off slapper with runners on 2nd and 3rd. She put it in the LC gap on a nice flyball over their heads. They stopped pulling in the OF after that.

That's awesome! I learned the hard way. It was 2 years ago at the State Tourney, a team we had played 4 times already earlier in the summer knew that our 2 1st year slappers were unable to hit hard line drives. This was the game to go to the championship and they played the outfield on the infield for our 2 slappers. Our lead-off went 2 for 4 and her 2 outs were 1) a line drive just over 2nd base caught by CF and 2) a 4-9 putout! (that's how far in they were playing, RF covered first base). We did win that game (10-2) as we scored 9 in the 1st where our lead-off slapper went 2-2 with 2 runs, then the OF really came in but it was too late.

The worst part for us was the #1 ranked team who we played next was watching and waiting and they did the same thing. Our slappers went 0-6 with 2 walks (looking at the book right now) and we lost the game 6-5 in the bottom of the 7th. It was something we didn't practice (having 7 infielders lol) and both first year slappers did not have the power to hit out of the IF with any regularity especially against really good pitching. We considered turning them back righty but at that point we decided we'd rather have a higher percentage chance of the ball put in play. I hate having a weakness exposed and I'll never forget it, I post it here so hopefully someone else can also learn from it.