Posted by: Andy (devilsbaseball19@yahoo.com) on Wed Nov 2 07:49:50 2005

>Kurt,

I think what the "A to C pathway" does not take into consideration is how momentum actually works. If you take your hands, or the bat, straight at the ball, or diagonally down, where will momentum take the bat through contact? The bat will not stay in line with the pitch or the towards the outfield, which is where we're trying to hit the ball. When a player runs out a double, does he rune straight at first, or make a slight arc? If he ran straight at first, he'd end up in RF before making the turn. Take a look again at http://www.hittingacademy.com/ohalibrary/picpages/atocpathwaypic1.cfm. The bat would travel several feet after contact before changing direction to level. The bat should travel on the same line as the pitch and the same line as the line drive you're trying to hit. It should take an slightly arcing pattern to get to the ball and through it. There are no straight lines anywhere in the swing.

"I would also like to know what you think of the A to C pathway the hands take to the ball for some hitters."

No hitter has ever taken this path. None. If you believe this, you've never seen video of the swing. Hitters who overtrain this straight line theory are doomed to mediocrity. And it's not just power hitters. Here's Pete Rose's swing http://www.youthbaseballcoaching.com/mpg/Rose.mpeg. Is that a staright line? The greatest singles hitter of all time did not take a straight path to the ball. If he did, he would have never played pro ball.


As far as the short stroke trainer, it's a good idea, but the path is too restrictive. The model swing in their video is not even close to a high level swing. The shortest distance travelled is not the quickest in the case of swinging a bat. In one dimension, yes, but you don't swing a bat in one dimension. Check out this physics demo, which is applicable to the types of swings being taught. http://solomon.physics.sc.edu/~tedeschi/demo/movies/balltrk5.mov. The curved, longer path is actually the quicker. A long, sweeping swing is inefficient, but so is the restrictive, weak, push swing I see in the shortstroke demo. Your using one extreme to avoid the other end. Embrace the truth, somewhere in the middle.






I would also like to know what you think of the A to C pathway the hands take to the ball for some hitters.
> http://www.hittingacademy.com/ohalibrary/picpages/atocpathwaypic1.cfm
>
> Personally I think this is the optimum entry angle that the hands should take to the ball to produce a consistent swing plan and an accurate bat. Because no matter how fast you swing the bat it doesn't matter if it doesn't hit the barrel. I put it this way: a bat moving through the contact zone at 85 mph with a long, loopy, momentus, and Uncontrolable swing, in which the ball hits the handle of the bat, is not going to travel as far or as fast as a bat moving through the contact zone at 75 mph with a short, sharp, and controlled swing, in which the ball hits the barrel (sweetspot).
>
> Now a lot of people would look at this argument and say, "well since you're saying that a slower swing is more accurate you may as well bunt everytime!" That's not what I'm saying. What I am saying is that although batspeed is important, swing control is important too. And somewhere in the mechanics of the swing the tradeoff between batspeed and swing control has to be made.
>
> I don't care whether the bat is moving through the contact zone at 100 mph, if you don't make contact in the sweetspot (or somewhere close) you'll end up with a bunch of weak outs.
>
> After looking at the mechanics being taught on this website, I just don't think it takes into consideration swing control.
>
> Hitting is an art of finding balance. Just like you have to balance batweight with batspeed to get optimum batted ball speed, you have to balance mechanics than are conducive to batspeed with mechanics that are conducive to swing control to get an optimum balance between power and consistency.