Posted by: Jack Mankin (MrBatspeed@aol.com) on Wed Dec 1 20:18:14 2004

"Put your hands in a cocked position with the bat in a vertical plane and the tip pointed slightly to the pitcher. The bat can be in front of the helmet( extreme) or over the top of the helmet. You will notice your rear elbow will be fairly high. Now stride to hit and see what happens to the hands.

You cannot go straight to the ball from there and you must get on plane first. This bat position will force you to ' scap load" the rear shoulder in order to hit the ball. As I have suggested before...."

the above comment was recently made by swingbuster at setpro ....."The bat can be in front of the helmet( extreme)"is indeed extreme, but nevertheless i think the comment illustrates what i have said many times before: sufficient bat cock & inward turn will automatically force the knob-to-the-catcher thing, and the hips will automatically be ahead of yhe hands, all without the hitter even having to think about it...and of course the high elbow helps prepare the hands for their circular habd path.....

Hi grc

It would certainly make a batting coach’s job simple if you were correct. However, of the videos sent to me for swing analysis, many of them have the bat cocked forward, have the back-elbow high and have a fairly good inward-turn but produce a less than satisfactory swing.

I agree that a good launch position is necessary to produce a good swing. But regardless of how great the launch position, many (if not most) of these batters that cock the bat forward still initiate the swing with the wrong forces applied in the wrong direction. Only a very few of these kids have the mechanics and rhythm to correctly sweep a cocked forward bat cleanly into the swing plane.

In fact, I suggest to most of them that it would be more productive for them to learn to acquire productive mechanics starting with the bat already in the swing plane. Once they can exhibit sound rotational transfer principles from that position, then start raising the bat-head or cocking it forward like Bonds and other Pro hitters.

Jack Mankin