Posted by: The Hitting Guru () on Sun May 23 19:08:04 2004

I've read on this post where the fastpitch swing for softball is the same as the pros in mlb.Mike Candrea who is the 2004 Olympic softball coach has stated as recently as Oct. 2003 in a coach's clinic that the swings are the same. He even had video of all the great hitters of MLB ( Bonds, Arod, Sosa, even Ruth and Mantle,and so on.) My question concerns the plane of the baseball vs the plane of the softball. It seems that in baseball the ball is definitely leaving the pitcher's hand at a higher plane and is heading downward into the strike zone where as in softball, the ball will leave the pitcher somewhere between her knee and thigh in a lower plane. The plane of the ball seems to dictate whether you would want an uppercut after contact as in baseball but would you still want to finish with a higher uppercut in the softball swing or try to maintain a level or slightly downward swing ?


Actually what you would prefer is a slight upswing (Ted William's Science of Hitting) not an upper cut. The theory behind the slight upswing is that it (1)keeps the bat in the hitting area longer as opposed to a downward swing and (2)facilitates a bat angle (around 45 degrees) (Robert K Adair's the physics of baseball) which helps produce optimum distance of a batted ball. Timing is a key to hitting. A good player to watch who employs sound principles is Marcus Giles of Atlanta. I pick him because he is a relative smaller player (5ft 8in 180lbs) but hits for a high average and has power and uses the rotational methods. Not to take anything away from the players you selected, but with their physical attributes they would probably have been homerun hitters using other techniques as well. The downward (level) swing is probably only recommended for players with exceptional speed and or hand-eye coordination (see Boggs, Miguel Dilone .340(1980) Juan Pierre. I would suggest rolling the wrist over early before I would suggest a downward swing.