This Guy Gets It

[Mudders Brudder]

There's reasons I'm on several hitting sites, because you never know where you'll find someone post something that's either an "Aha!" moment, or something that better explains or gives another example of what you're already doing/teaching.

The following is an example of the latter, and Joey Gomes (Jonny's brother) sounds like he understands the "four absolutes" I alluded to in another thread...and from the article, sounds like he's producing some real high level hitters with it.

A couple of things he believes, and I couldn't agree with more...

"Joey wasn’t huge on mechanics — obviously not,” Spencer Torkelson said. “Me and Vaughn have completely different types of swings. (Gomes) was big on the mental approach to the game.”

"Here’s another Gomes theory: Keep it simple."

"Gomes never used small balls or thin bats as a teaching tool. And he has never focused on bat speed or launch angle while building Torkelson’s swing."

"The terms now like, launch angle is very popular, and hip-shoulder separation is very popular, and abductor muscles versus adductor muscles, which one was quicker twitch. It’s very popular. But in order to create the hitter you don't build it like that."

"Here's another Gomes theory: Create hitters, not swings."

"Anybody that's been in my cage knows that is the most important thing to us — your ability to consistently square up the baseball,” he said."

"It's our opinion that, you know, that if you are a chessboard, and you're on offense, and you are talking about hitting — pawns care about how they swing to the ball, kings care about how they hit the ball," Gomes said. "We pride ourselves on the ability to square that baseball up and we work diligently at creating that thing.”

Gomes gets it....will you?

 

[Eric F]

I'm a believer that good mechanics can help a hitter hit the ball more often, and with more power. However, the single most important factor in hitting is the athletic skill of aligning a moving round bat with a moving round ball...at the right time.

 

[tim_s]

its both......you need proper mechanics, to some extent, to consistently replicate your swing and to have proper timing, generate power, etc AND you need to consistently square up the ball

thing is, most major leaguers have world class hand speed and fantastic reaction time and coordination.......with those tools you CAN have more variation in mechanics

but if you are starting from ground zero with a young, inexperienced student......you start with proper mechanics to build that swing, it's just simple pedagogy at that point


baseball is too much about mysticism vs science, tradition vs new school........there's nothing new under the sun, it's all about finding someone who speaks the language that you as a coach/teacher or player understands and makes sense to you....

 

[julray]

I opened this thread and expected to see a picture of me