Posted by: Coach Cain (coachcain16@yahoo.com) on Wed May 18 12:14:40 2005

> I used to feel that moving around in the box was a key to getting an advantage of certain pitchers (back of box for rise ball, up in box slow pitchers/drop ballers). I feel that a batter should be making contact as far back as her swing will allow. Meaning if you have a longer reach or taller in heighth, you can buy some time by getting further back in the box and making contact in front or on top of plate. I feel if you get up in box, you are taking away time to "see" the pitch and putting the pitcher at more of an advantage.
For some reason in softball, we feel that a drop ball pitcher, we should be out front, so we can hit it before it drops. What is not to say a fastball or riseball will not be thrown. A strike is a strike, and if we have the proper technique to hit all pitches in the strike zone and anticipation is correct, I feel that we need to have plate coverage and our bat reach will dictate how far away we stand from plate and our stride width(balance) will dictate how far back we stand.
I teach the front foot at heel plant should be somewhere around front of plate and the back foot should be placed where balance is created. Put it this way, if the softball gods said tomorrow that the distance is changed from 40 - 45, 43 - 48. All hitters should be happy, but for some reason we try to take away footage(time) by setting up at 38' on 40' distances(41 on 43', etc.) because I feel our mental approach is defensive, not offensive, and we give too much credit to pitcher. I would want more time to decide to swing, not less. On the other side, if I could not reach a outside pitch on top of plate, then I am putting myself in a position to reach for outside strikes and taking away fair ball territory if contact is made if balls are hit deep (where they are supposed to be. ) Sounds sensible to me? I believe that just because she throws a drop, that does not mean I have to hit it. If it is a strike and you have anticipated it , yeah, put a good swing on it. Don't put all of your focus on "Not" being able to hit a certain pitch that you adjust everything for that pitch and it prevents you to hit other pitches.

So the players for Mizzou probably should have been more up in box , but not in front of box unless they are comfortable and have success from a lesser distance to swing.


> I was watching Texas and Mizzou yesterday in the Big 12 Championship Game and i noticed that about 2 or 3 players on Mizzou in the back of the batters box against Cat Osterman and they got one hit off of her and it was a hanging pitch. Cat Osterman is a drop ball pitcher and she struck out 16 or 17 batters. I dont know how a batter can hit a drop ball pitcher in the back of the batters box but I could be wrond