Posted by: Jack Mankin (MrBatspeed@aol.com) on Mon Aug 11 00:00:18 2008

>>> I believe you failed to fully evaluate the concept of swinging down to the baseball. As you stated, at some point it is necessary to swing down toward the ball if the hands are starting around the head. Understanding this, we must look at the most direct bat path to the baseball for most of the great hitters, this of course is a straight line from where the bat starts at an angled position behind the batters head angled at roughly 45 degrees down to the point of contact on a middle/middle pitch. *note that all different pitches have different points of contact which provides a slight variation in the swing.* As a baseball player we want to make contact with the bottom third of the ball on a downward angle providing for more backspin. I most definitely encourage you to try this and really feel the difference between hitting a ball focusing on contact on a down angle to the ball and up angle through the ball making contact with the bottom third of the baseball! <<<

Hi Eugene

Welcome to the site. – I have traced the bat trajectories of most MLB hitters. The two clips below represent the bat trajectory range I normally find. As you will see, Ryan Braun has less of an up-slope at contact than Josh Hamilton with most good hitters somewhere in between. Eugene, I have not reviewed a MLB hitter with the down-slope at contact you describe. If you know of one that you think does, I may have his swing on file and would be glad to review it.

Braun & Hamilton - up-slope to contact

Jack Mankin