Posted by: TC2 () on Wed May 19 09:34:34 2004

My 9 year old son is a righty but has been batting lefty for 5 years and is struggling at the plate. Should I make him switch to righty?
>
> Tks
> CA

Carlos,

You don't provide enough info to identiy his reasons for the struggles at the plate? It could be a multitude of reasons be it,
biomechanical, eye dominance, right hand dominance, tracking, swing/pitch choices, any number of glitches etc.

Regardless, and I think most would agree here, just switching him over to the right side is NOT going to produce magical immediate results. Quite frankly, his struggles might turn into disasters.
If you didn't fix what was broken from his comfortable side there is no guarantee it will be fixed just by switching to his opposite side. Couple that with a 9 year old, I presume in the middle of a season, trying to learn a new swing and IMO, you are heading the wrong way to fixing his struggles.

Carlos, jump to the best, most recent professional example: Jeter went through a tumultuous hitting "struggle" (sounds better than slump) nobody plopped him over to the other side and for good common sense reasons.

I know you said "make" your son switch but I hope you didn't mean that literally. Making him switch, IMO, is going to "make" it even more of a struggle.