Posted by: John Smith (sclosky10@msn.com) on Thu Apr 21 05:13:12 2005

Jack,

At all levels of baseball, I see alot of athletes, taking long stances and strides. I don't like a long stance because too often a batter doesn't turn their hips and they use all arms to swing, especially when seeing off-speed pitching. Further, I am against a long stride because the amount of time it takes for a batter to pick-up the pitch out of the pitchers hand and to see it, the long stride changes your head position (you duck) when that pitch is coming at you. The batter also has committed a long stride forward on a pitch they haven't processed yet as being an off-speed pitch, inside pitch or outside pitch. Thus, they can't turn on an inside pitch, step towards an outside pitch, etc.. My son's high school coach said that power hitters take long strides. I disagree!

Can you please discuss this with the viewers of your website.