Posted by: andy (andy_paulus@yahoo.com) on Fri Jul 8 17:34:48 2005

>Of course I understand that the players who pull the ball the least are not as effective. I am assuming that you are BHL, who constantly posts his theories that a hitter should pull EVERY pitch. While great hitters pull the ball frequently, someone who postulates that attempting to pull every pitch is the key to hitting is obviously someone who never hit a moving ball and doesn't understand timing.

And the point of posting that list was that the top 12 pull hitters were not names like Bonds, Guerrero, Ramirez, Pujols, Ortiz, ARod, etc. They were mostly 2nd tier hitters who hit HRs with low averages (Palmerio hit .260 BTW). We should teach to copy the best hitters. The best hitters hit the ball hard, anywhere. The way to hit the highest percentage of balls, hard, is not to try to pull everything.



> Palmeiro hit 38 homers in 2003, and if he pulled the ball in 2003, you'd figure he has been a pull hitter his entire career, unless he altered his entire hitting style. Same goes for McGriff, and I'd say he's had a pretty good career, won't you? Off the top of my head, I can name 3 players for which the defense moves into an exaggerated "shift" due to a tendency to pull each pitch: Barry Bonds, Cliff Floyd, and Jason Giambi. Not bad.
>
> Regardless, compare the first set of players to the second set. You cannot deny that the players who DON'T pull the baseball are much worse than those that do. Does this mean nothing to you?