radial deviation

[Hitter]

I'll try that, Howard.

My comments above were in response to the contention that Pujols is either pulling back towards the catcher with his top hand (THT, or Top-Hand-Torque), or that he was actively turning his forearms with a torquing motion (both hands pulling in opposite directions) to launch the swing.

If he IS doing either of these things, I see no evidence of it in the video frames posted by batsics. What I see in those frames is a very well connected hitter with powerful rotation.

I'm in agreement with Chris:



Best regards,

Scott

Scott I think we are on the same page....I see the hands transitioning with the bat as the back elbow and lead elbow are moving and the shoulders are turning and tilting, elbow above the hands and hands above the ball adjusting to the plane of the pitch. I do not teach a conscious effort to pre torque or torque the bat. I teach top of the hands are at the top of the shoulder and no higher than the ear hole on the helmet. Back elbow is not up however it is away so it can lower. We separate rearward and straight back at or slightly before toe touch. I do not worry about the lead elbow as it will come up however I put more emphasis on it moving forward and up at the same time. The action of the lead elbow is described as where my elbow was my hand will be and we put the top hand palm face down and put our lead elbow on top of the back of the outstretched back of the hand. As the elbow moves forward we want the elbow to move forward and the forearm of the lead hand to not loose contact with the back of our hand and then finally where the elbow was the lead hand will be...it moved forward and up like going up a ramp as our shoulders were moving. The kids get it and that works for us. Anything I would say would sound like bragging as to who uses this and I will PM you.

This is why I focused on making the hammer bat so we could feel the transitioning forward and keep the sweet spot of the bat on the ball or nail the ball. I have different weights on the handle I can screw in so we can change the feel of the centripetal force. Don used it with the Tigers and Jim with the Padres. The WhipHit was the next evolution and was mainly used for the lead arm elbow action and staying inside the path of the ball. The CNST team got good enough with it to take live B/P and most of my kids can do it. If you look at the WhipHit web site they may still have one of my boys who was 12 at the time using it. He hit a ball 317 feet this past summer and why 317 feet? It had rained the night before and there was a puddle on the other side of the 300 foot fence and it literally stuck in the mud, no roll, just splash down and dad measured it. What some people will do for a three dollar ball wearing $100 plus Nike's!

One more comment....Crystl describes leading with the elbows and the knob of the bat leading the elbows plus having a .400 average through her 10 year career. I teach girls mainly now days, so I try to use an NPF or other elite girls as models for the swing and currently I feel and am somewhat prejudiced in saying her swing does not look bad for a girl does it! I know Jennie and she is not the best in the world however she gets it done with the best of them. Ask Bustos who is the best as she has faced them all....compare apples to apples. What does Bill Houses rise ball look like compared to Jennie? I saw Bills about a month ago when doing a clinic...no comparison his moves!

Howard

 

[Hitter]

I'll just leave you guys with this exchange between Bonds and Jennie Finch.

Bonds, who will face Finch when the Pan Am Games end, has already begun playing mind games, trash talking with Finch at last month's All-Star game.

According to Finch, this is the way it went after she and Bonds were introduced around the batting cage:

Bonds: "I heard you're one of the best. Well, you're not the best until you face the best."

Finch: "You haven't faced my riseball."

Bonds: "You haven't seen my top hand. This is what I'm going to do to you."

With that, the San Francisco Giant slugger hit three pitches into the seats, one to each field.

Notice how Bonds didn't say "You haven't seen my back scap", "You haven't seen my back elbow lower", or "You haven't seen my shoulders rotate".

Nope, it was "You haven't seen my top hand".

Same thing the Chicago White Sox Academy guy was describing.

When you get in a cage against live pitching and do what Pujols, Bonds and Bustos are doing, the advantages become very clear. There is a huge advantage in having your bat head accelerating into the lag position while your hands stay back as you read the pitch.

I am not is dispute with you especially on bat speed...AP's bat speed is 86.99 MPH GQ the magazine September 2006 article, How To Build The Perfect Hitter. In part, "In a separate GQ study...researchers will calculate Pujols's bat speed to be 86.99 miles per hour. Performance coach Craig Pippin, who has done bat speed studies at Motion DNA, a Scottsdale, Arizona, bio mechanics firm, says that these results place Pujols at the low end of the pro player spectrum." And "In Detroit, Slaught clicks his mouse again and suddenly, in four quadrants of my computer screen, I am watching video of, respectively, Pujols, Alex Rodriguez, Vladimir Guerrero, and Ivan Rodriguez. As the players move their bats forward, four pitches enter the various frames. Slaught freezes the image of Pujols and draws a green line from the ball to the heart of the catcher's mitt. He then traces the inverted arc of Pujols's bat in red. On the other end of the phone, Slaught laughs in disbelief. "He's on plane with the pitch for about five feet!"...Slaught observes, the sweet spot of Pujols's bat stays inside the "big zone" for so long that even if he mistimes the pitch, he will still, in most cases, make contact with the ball."
And "Elliott has installed several hundred thousand dollar's worth of force plates at his facility to assess the "vector coordinates" of an athlete's application of energy to the ground."

Team USA, if I recall correctly may have studied this at Chula Vista and I know Don has worked with UCLA engineering on this type of study prior to the 2008 games.

Crystl's bat speed is also 79 MPH as measured by Team USA and in my garage using a Swing Speed Radar and we do a unscientific demonstration of her "big zone" in slow motion. We tie a cord with two whiffle balls threaded through a rope and have her swing it real slow, kind of like from the movie Matrix, super slow! I stand to the side and look for the bat to enter the area of the plane of the pitch and slide a ball to that mark and then where the bat exits the plane of the pitch I slide the other ball. The sweet spot of the bat is marked with blue and red electrical tape. Then using my trusty Craftsman tape measurer, I measure the distance between the balls and it is usually 68 to 72 inches on a good day! AP's was 60 inches! Yes, this is static measurements and not a full blown swing and you can do it on RVP. Use the Gold Medal Game swing from 2004 on the 308.5 foot shot and let me know what it is please.

At clinics we use caution tape and clothes pins to measure our "big zone" before and after. Several hundred measurements and we have found most kids are between 35 and 45 inches and some are a little more and some less. I feel staying in the "big zone: and how to get the kids to see it, feel it and fix it takes precedence over THT, PCR or anything else as these are kids we are working with and how can we relate to them better so they can enjoy the game more. Usually after we explain how to keep the bat on the plane of the pitch longer we see 45 to 55 inches. We use ball peen hammers and a ball on a stick and show them how to use the $7 dollar hammer before the $300 dollar bat and that the wrist is a hinge and has levers with it

Thanks Howard

 

[tom.guerry]

CO: "The bat head is moving because his shoulders are moving, not because of anything his hands or wrists are doing.

"The paper that Tom linked to proved this."

Comment: The Cross paper linked by hitter did not address how the body moves.

the Nyman model is set up so that nothing happens until the torso/flywheel is set in motion, so in this case the top hand attachment of back arm mass sets up an instantaneous positive couple that resists the inertia of bat drag.

likewise in golf models a "stop" needs to be in place when the motion starts to resist bat inertia.

in humans in the MLB pattern, the torquing force needs to be in place BEFORE the shoulders begin to turn the bat. This can be seen on the surface much of the time in MLB hitters and is present all the time "under the hood" in the MLB pattern.

sarge: "My comments above were in response to the contention that Pujols is either pulling back towards the catcher with his top hand (THT, or Top-Hand-Torque), or that he was actively turning his forearms with a torquing motion (both hands pulling in opposite directions) to launch the swing.

"If he IS doing either of these things, I see no evidence of it in the video frames posted by batsics"

The motion is better seen with clips, not stiils, that you can play back and forth with quicktime for example, better seen at frame rates in the 24-30 or at most 60 fps frame rate.

Look at clips of MLB players and see if the bat turns BEFORE the shoulders move.


I like the "lead with the knob" cue in the sense of the knob turning by simultaneous swivel of forearms, rotation of elbows and tilt of shoulders at GO.

prior to this the bat turning forces have already started.

after the "GO" starts, the hands stay back and resist the turn that works up from the hips to the shoulders to optimize load/unload of the torso.

 

[HittingGuru]

[



I like the "lead with the knob" cue in the sense of the knob turning by simultaneous swivel of forearms, rotation of elbows and tilt of shoulders at GO.

prior to this the bat turning forces have already started.

after the "GO" starts, the hands stay back and resist the turn that works up from the hips to the shoulders to optimize load/unload of the torso.[/QUOTE]

I agree with this long plane whch is achieved with extension with the ball and the un hinging of the hinge angle right at contact. Lead with the knob is critical if done properly. I know from past errors that top hand control in any fashion to early creates bad angles of contact and a reduction of body connection. This person really knows what they are talking about.

 

[Chris O'Leary]

in humans in the MLB pattern, the torquing force needs to be in place BEFORE the shoulders begin to turn the bat. This can be seen on the surface much of the time in MLB hitters and is present all the time "under the hood" in the MLB pattern...

sarge: "My comments above were in response to the contention that Pujols is either pulling back towards the catcher with his top hand (THT, or Top-Hand-Torque), or that he was actively turning his forearms with a torquing motion (both hands pulling in opposite directions) to launch the swing.

"If he IS doing either of these things, I see no evidence of it in the video frames posted by batsics"

The motion is better seen with clips, not stiils, that you can play back and forth with quicktime for example, better seen at frame rates in the 24-30 or at most 60 fps frame rate.

Here's a crystal clear, 60FPS clip that I shot myself to answer this exact question.

While he's applying enough torque to maintain the hinge angle, he's not applying any more torque than that. That is why the hinge angle is constant through Frame 28.

The only time people say they try to prove the existence of torque, it's using blurry, context-free clips, no crystal clear ones.

 

[tom.guerry]

old fashioned 30 fps video blurs with motion which is a fine way to appreciate how the barrel is accelerating. with these high rate digitals you get the weird out of plane distortion and you have to estimate acceleration bt how far the barrel moves each frame.

in the first frame here, the barrel is turning by back arm EXternal rotation and lead arm INternal rotation BEFORE the shoulders have moved as part of coil/rubberbandwinding.

arms move before shoulders.

shoulders slaved to arms.

arms slaved to forearms and hands.

 

[Chris O'Leary]

old fashioned 30 fps video blurs with motion which is a fine way to appreciate how the barrel is accelerating. with these high rate digitals you get the weird out of plane distortion and you have to estimate acceleration bt how far the barrel moves each frame.

Look at the hinge angle.

Does it change early or doesn't it?

The truth is that it doesn't.

in the first frame here, the barrel is turning by back arm EXternal rotation and lead arm INternal rotation BEFORE the shoulders have moved as part of coil/rubberbandwinding.

Agreed.

 

[ssarge]

I know from past errors that top hand control in any fashion to early creates bad angles of contact and a reduction of body connection.

Guru: Agreed, but would be interested in your definition of "too early."

in the first frame here, the barrel is turning by back arm EXternal rotation and lead arm INternal rotation BEFORE the shoulders have moved as part of coil/rubberbandwinding.

Chris: Are you saying that is the same as either THT or what is commonly defined as "swivel?" If so, the definition of either is once again, a moving target (not by you) and I haven't kept up with this week's iteration.

Thanks,

Scott

 

[Chris O'Leary]

Chris: Are you saying that is the same as either THT or what is commonly defined as "swivel?" If so, the definition of either is once again, a moving target (not by you) and I haven't kept up with this week's iteration.

Last I checked, this was more running start than swivel.

But then, I've never managed to pin anyone down on swivel.

P.S. I do think that running start is an interesting idea that makes some sense (overcoming inertia) and for which there is some evidence.

 

[Chris O'Leary]

Bonds: "I heard you're one of the best. Well, you're not the best until you face the best."

Finch: "You haven't faced my riseball."

Bonds: "You haven't seen my top hand. This is what I'm going to do to you."

With that, the San Francisco Giant slugger hit three pitches into the seats, one to each field.[/B]

Notice how Bonds didn't say "You haven't seen my back scap", "You haven't seen my back elbow lower", or "You haven't seen my shoulders rotate".

Nope, it was "You haven't seen my top hand".

A client plays for the Giants and has talked hitting with Bonds.* I haven't to him much but, all of the drills I have heard described sound like they would focus on preventing bat drag and maintaining connection, rather than achieving real top hand dominance. As I interpret it, it's more about making sure the pivot point and hands are positioned correctly and don't get too far ahead of the rest of the body.

* Bonds evidently knows his stuff and would make a great instructor.