Posted by: JimAZ (james.huang@honeywell.com) on Wed Sep 28 11:48:40 2005

Hi all, I was wondering if you could help me with this. My son uses the rotation method for hitting and his instructors have been telling him to aim his hands straight for the ball or inside the ball. So the bat pretty much goes in a downward motion. I am worried about the lack of swinging level. The instructors say don't worry about it, the bat will square itself up naturally before contact. It seems to be true, my son is doing well this way but I worry that timing seems so critical here.

Then I saw a video of Pujols hitting a home run. It was a chest/stomach high fast ball and I could clearly see the bat go BELOW the ball and then back up before contact in the plane of the ball. (An uppercut swing?) I wonder how Pujols did it, the hands seem to go fairly straight at the ball, did he angle the bat with his hands to bring it down and into a level swing? Does he lose bat speed doing this? Can the hands take one path while the bat takes another?

What's ideal? Faster batspeed vs. swinging level? Can you get both?

Thanks!