Posted by: THG () on Tue Jan 15 14:27:07 2008

Jack. Can you allude to what you believe causes an incorrect swing plane?

I happened to notice that often when a hitter fouls the ball straight back he is actually slightly late on the pitch (as opposed to being right on it but swinging under the ball.) That hitter in my opinion is doing everything correct, but is picking up the ball just late enough as to allow him not to make forward contact.

This is in sharp contrast to the hitter who when late attempts to collapse (short cut in some way) his swing in an effort to throw the bat head to the ball mid way through the swing in an effort to hit the ball out in front.

Thus I feel that atleast some incorrect swing planes are caused by timing errors. And often the result is the hitter being late on the fastball but early on the breaking ball. This results in a confused hitter who cannot seem to hit even fat pitches over the heart of the plate.

And it is not uncommon for a physical error to develop into a mental error which exacerbates the problem.