Posted by: JLB (oz2009@verizon.net) on Fri May 9 05:06:24 2008

> How do you hit an outside pitch without letting it get deep? The hands move away from the body, and slap it away. Look, I agree that in the perfect world, the best possible stroke to put on a ball, is based on rotaional hitting but, it's not a perfect world obviously.
> I'm fortunate to watch the Red Sox a lot. As gifted as Manny Ramirez is, I've seen him numerous times taking the ball the other way, as does youkillis, ortiz etc. My point is that , again, ideally, should they let the ball get deep and excercise rotational hitting? Sure.
> But, when a hitter is just trying to make contact, maybe the result of being fooled, he's just trying to get his bat on the ball. Linear, rotational, a hybrid of the two? Who Knows? Just try hitting something coming at you in excess of 90 mph and, try hitting it with a thin piece of wood! :)take care.

That's fine but no one advocates taking a two strike approach/model to hitting because you have to cover the entire plate and yes, you often slap at the ball. If you watch Manny closely, he sets up pitchers and plays a cat and mouse game with them until he gets HIS pitch to hit which my friend is not slapped at. BTW, Mike Schmidt thinks you can hybrid the swing between linear and rotational depending on pitch location.