Posted by: Mister X () on Thu Apr 24 17:19:39 2003

From what I can see by looking at the player at the top of this page, he does in fact have translational movement. This movement does not mean that the batters weight should necessarily be out over the front leg, but as a batter picks up his front leg his weight automatically goes back. Then as the swing begins, this weight is shifted from the loaded position (back) to through the baseball at the point of contact. The swing involves rotational movement as well as translational movement.
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> > > I agree with Mr. Mankin in that the force that initiates the rotation of the swing begins in the legs. However, I think it begins with shifting the weight to the back leg, and then getting it shifted forward as you rotate. If one were to simply rotate around a fixed axis with no translational movement, the only way they could generate power would be to shift their weight upwards. I think that this results in the weight never getting through the ball at the point of contact. I guess if you're Barry Bonds or Sammy Sosa you would still be able to hit the ball out of the park, but the average sized high school player would not have consistent success.
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> > Shifting your weight up is a good thing. The pitch comes at downward angle, so shifting your weight up, into the ball at the same angle gives you a lot of power. If you want more info on this check out SetPro. There they talk about the "sit and stand". To put it simply, when the batter loads, there is some sitting movement, and as he swings, he shifts his weight up and stands more (you can see it in Bagwell and even in Bonds some). You made a pretty good observation there.
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> When you talk about the ball traveling on a downward angle, is it really that much of a downward angle (and I don't think 10-15 degrees is) that you would want to shift your weight up into the pitch.


ANY KIND OF ANGLE MATTERS!!! The pitcher stands on an elevated mound so that means the ball comes down to the strike zone. Think about geometric planes. The pitch comes down on a plane, and to have the best chance of making contact you want to match the plane. If you match the plane exactly then you timing can be off, and you still hit the ball hard. To take it to the extreme think of the pitch coming in level to the ground. And pretend that the only way that you hit the ball is by swing straight down (pretend their are some weird rules and you goal is to drive the ball straight down into the ground). The pitch plane and the swing plane are perpendicular to each other, so there is only ONE point where you can hit the center of the ball with the center of the bat. But if you match the plane, there are infinite places where you can hit the ball squarely which allows you timing to be off.

I don't mean to be blunt, but if you don't think 10-15 degrees matters, then you have no clue about what goes in to hitting. ONE QUARTER OF AN INCH can be the difference between a harmless fly out and a game winning HR. And as an aside, maybe you should start listening to Paul Nyman as he believes in matching the pitch plane. Plus he knows FAR more than me and could explain it better than me.