Posted by: Mike Myers (mike.myers@bell.ca) on Mon Sep 26 20:05:39 2005

Jack,

People have problems adapting cage work to game situations for several reasons. Lack of live pitching experience is generally cited as the reason for poor transfer of mechanics between environments.

How important is body weight, however? It occurs to me that even if one were perfectly able to hit live pitches in a cage (or by addressing a heavy bag, and graduating to soft-toss as you suggest), a huge difference from game situation is typically the ground co-efficient of friction (solid floor, to typical batter's box sand, for example).

Have you found a weight "floor", such that if a batter weighs less than this, he can never drive the legs without significant foot slipping (regardless of body strength) and develop great power.

Since frictional force is represented as a fraction of the normal force (fractional coefficient depending on surface type), it seems even a very strong batter will be ineffective if he cannot produce a large normal (i.e. body weight) force to drive rotation.

Regards,
Mike.