Posted by: Jack Mankin (mrbatspeed@aol.com) on Sat Apr 17 23:00:03 2004

>>> Jack, I have to disagree with some of what you have said. First, all hitters in the big leagues rotate to hit unless they are fooled. Second, you are incorrect when you say a number of big league hitters with high averages that can pull outside pitches a great distance. Only if they stand right on the plate making an outside corner fastball a pitch in their happy zone. Bonds used to stand with his front foot almost touching home plate, but changed about 6-7 years ago and moved off about 4-5 inches. The reason he did that is that when he was on the plate, he could not handle or keep fair the pitch on the inside corner. At that time in his career, he tried to pull everything and then moved off the plate a little and became a much better hitter for average and power. He started banging pitches away to left and center and pulled all the stuff middle in.

Other than Bonds when he stood on the plate, who else pulls balls a long way that are outside corner pitches? Rob Deer tried, but it is the main reason he hit about .225 every year. The guys today don't stand on the plate, because they are taught to go the other way with the tin bats in amatuer ball and are chastised when they try to pull anything. If you can stand about 12-15 off the plate and can pull balls with authority in the air that are on the outside corner, I will buy you a steak dinner wherever you want.

Rotational mechanics are excellent, but they don't allow you to do everything you want. If a good hitter could pull every pitch and hit it hard in the air, he would hit 150 HR's. The truth is, they can't do it.

Doug <<<

Hi Doug

I completely disagree with your statement. – While collecting video of swings for my study, I made a tape that contained about 125 of the most well hit balls I had found. Most of these were long home runs and were shown over again from the across the plate view. Therefore, I had both views of most of these swings.

I was very surprised at the high percentage (maybe 20 to 25 percent) of these bombs were from pitches on the outside part of the plate that were pulled. It was not uncommon to find a good number of hitters who did not crowd the plate (Brett, Eric Davis, Strawberry, Sosa, Big Mac - that I can recall off the top of my head) pull outside pitches for home runs. Of course they didn’t pull all outside pitches, but it was not all that uncommon either. I am no longer surprised because I now have a better understanding of how energy can be generate for outside pitches.

Doug, I have no data to support it, but I would venture to say that there are as many outside pitches pulled for home runs as hit for home runs to the opposite field. I know I have always been impressed when a batter hit a home run to the opposite field and studied those swings in more detail.

Jack Mankin