Posted by: JAC (totallyme1@msn.com) on Sun Oct 16 00:04:45 2005

Mike

Leave the high hands to the pros. If it was working you wouldn't be complaining about ground balls and bad balance.

Here's a "tip" on balance: Bend forward at the waist toward homeplate. Counterbalance by bending at the knees and feeling some sit down weight in the rear. Heels should feel very light on the ground, with most of the weight on the balls of the feet. You should be able to wiggle your heels slightly up and down.

High elbows go with high hands. Your back elbow is most likely getting down late thereby producing ground balls, and the hands are not flattening soon enough. Here is what needs to happen: when your stride heel lands the back elbow should have come down to AT LEAST 45 degrees from the level of your back shoulder. (Bagwell's back elbow is actually just off of his back hip! This is extreme, but it works for his style of hitting.) The hands need to be moving quickly into a flat hand position - fingernails of the top hand pointing skyward - so that your bat plane can be slightly angled up to match the downward plane of the pitch.

The back shoulder will drop to some extent with the back elbow, however, on high pitches the back shoulder will not drop very much. This will make for a flatter swing.

If you need any more info you might check "weathervaning", and what is written about tilt, on mikeepstein.com or perhaps it is mikeepsteinhitting.com. I'm not sure. One or the other will probably work for you.

Good luck. You'll need it if you persist with the high hands that produces late elbow drop and subsequent ground balls. When this happens increased bat speed is meaningless.