Posted by: Jack Mankin (MrBatspeed@aol.com) on Sat Nov 18 13:34:20 2000

>>>I too have the same question about radial
deviation as described by Emanski. I would describe
radial deviation for a rt handed hitter as follows.

Your left wrist would rotate backwards about 45 degrees.Your
hand wrist and forarm would be in a " > " shape. While holding
the bat your bottom hand would be closer to the catcher as would the knob of the bat. The head of the bat would be angled back at the pitcher. Emanski says that radial deviation helps prevent the head of the bat from casting out back toward the cather. He uses the fence drill to demonstrate this. He has the batter put his back foot against the fence, then hit normally. If done right the bat does not cast backwards and contact the fence.<<<

Hi

Sorry for the delay in my response. --- I call the mechanic you describe as "Swinging under the bat-head." Batters who have a lot of cock to the bat and initiates the swing by shoving the hands forward, show lower performance numbers. The bat-head stays fairly stationary as the hands are accelerated a good distance under it. --- Many of the great hitters have a lot of cock in their bat during pre-launch but will accelerate the bat-head back (pre-launce top-hand-torque) toward the normal launch position before full initiation (shoulder rotation begins).

So once again as with the other fence drill - a great hitter would do some serious damage to a fence while performing that drill. But even if he did not make contact with the fence, the bat-head should be accelerating back toward it through initiation.

Jack Mankin