stepping out

[quincy]

2 things about the above picture; 1st the white thing on her left hand is a finger brace because she has a fractured finger she earned earlier in our season while batting, 2nd is her head looks OK, but her eyes are closed tight.

We suggested that she stop for the season and start anew next season but she wanted to play. Her Doctor approved her playing; something along the lines of it is going to hurt like hell but she would be fine. DD wanted to play and help the Team but, I think she subconsciously said, I do not want to get hurt bad again. Worst hitter you have ever seen, she was bailing on everything.

We went back to working on her basics and confidence with hitting. For us it was hitting off the tee, baseballs, balls coming in a little slower and just a lot of hitting. Would I recommend her swing in the picture? No, but you can see that the ball is inside and she is on it, not bailing out. We did change her to the “Texas pivot” but that was more because we could not stop her from picking her front foot 3 feet off the ground when she was swinging.

We did buy a board at the hardware store and had her stand on it when she hit. She was only allowed to swing if her feet stayed on the board. She could bail out all she wanted to but if she swung both her feet needed to stay on the board. Benefit of using the board was that it provided her immediate feedback when she was bailing out. I could just pitch to her and say good swing, she knew the rules with the board and worked on the bailing out on her own.

We also worked on bunting quite a bit. Not impossible but it is hard for the batter to bail out on a bunt. Bunting “forced” her to stay in there.

Her eyes’ being closed was just noticed recently and since we are on a winter break we have not worked on it yet. Our plan is to take Videos of her when she is hitting and show them to her during practice. She is actually tracking the ball ok, she just closes her eyes at the last second for some reason. She does it unconsciously and will tell you she does not close them thus the video.

Depending on how soon the girl is closing her eyes you can also try putting some design or numbers on the ball that the batter needs to tell you what it was after every pitch. Should force the girl to concentrate on the ball and keep her eyes open most the pitch anyways. A side benefit should be that she is concentrating on the ball so much she “forgets” to bail out and just swings. I personally have not tried this but it makes since to me.

 

[SBdad]

A soft toss machine that might help solve stepping out is the Ultimate Hitting Machine. This is a hitting aid that tosses a ball in the air when a batter steps down on a launch pad. Batter keeps their foot on launch pad while ball is tossed up...... as ball is going up, they load up (with foot still on launch pad) and take normal swing (rotate around) as ball starts back down. You can tell every time if they bail out...their foot will step back off the launch pad when they swing, and they won't make good contact. If they focus on keeping their foot on the pad while they rotate around, then they will get in the habit of keeping the front foot in place when they swing, and they will feel the difference in how solid of contact they make with the ball.

(Note: No kid is the same height, so the machine will have to be adjusted to toss the ball up to the right height (for that individual), so they will have time to load and be ready to swing as ball starts back down........easy to adjust!)