Posted by: Jeff McDowell (mcdowell@txcyber.com) on Fri Oct 31 08:02:58 2003

I will have to concur with Jack's analysis that for pure power, rolling of the wrists at contact will reduce the power or transfer of energy at contact. Try it yourself. If you consiously attempt to roll your wrists at contact by top hand over, you have effectively slowed the bat speed down.
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> > One discussion I never see is that there are pure power hitters and onbase guys.
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> > It appears the pure power hitter effectively moves runners, when and only when contact is made. But that type of hitter will, more often than not, strike out. Frank Thomas comes to mind. This type of hitter typically is the muscle bound player that couldn't make it to base in 4.5 seconds.
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> > Then there is the classic lead off type of hitter that will live in the 1,2 7 and 9 hole who pokes a ball over the infield, out of reach of the outfield and advances runners one base, while getting on himself. This type of batter hasn't seen this website and undoubtedly frustrated many, many coaches through the years with his mechanics. However, this type of batter makes things happen and our time might be warranted in identifying that type of hitter and exploring how to make them more effective as well.
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> > There is a place for both and the necessity to make all hitters like Sosa and Thomas is not practical, nor warranted.
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> Not really. Properly done a good rotational swing will give you power AND average within the limits of your physical gifts. For instance, Bonds. Now Mac did make some concessions to power sacrificing some K's in the process. But they were/are both rotational. Just different applications which I've gone into too many times to walk that road again. I would call Rose rotational. He was a pretty good contact/BA guy don't you think?


Hard to argue about the numbers Pete put on the board and not arguing about the perfect swing, but very few have it.