Posted by: Chuck (Chuck10112@gmail.com) on Sun Sep 7 09:35:23 2008

Your first analogy with the 1000 pound bench press doesn't make sense. Yes if you were to put 1000 pounds 6 inches away from my chest and I were to push, it would go nowhere (it would probably crush my chest) and my arms would be bent. But obviously this isn't the case when you're taking about a baseball swing because the hips do move forward. Now back to the bench press analogy. Say somehow I was able to move the bench press off of my chest, would my already bent arms bend even more? Of course not, they would extend. So since the hips do move forward and the back leg does bend, it's obvious that the legs aren't what pushes the hips forward.

"Where does the power to slide the hips come from? do you merely plant your lead foot then slide the hips , like a hula dancer? or do you get the power from the ground under the rear foot?"

I love how you used the word merely, as if simply using that word invalidates the other side of the argument.

Anyway to answer your question you do MERELY plant your lead foot and then slide the hips like a hula dancer (that was actually a good comparison on your part). Your power doesn't come from pushing with the rear foot. I don't know why it's so difficult for you to grasp the fact that the hips can move independent of the feet.

"So, let me see, you [know] what Pedroia does better then he knows what he does? He knows what he is thinking better then you or me."

I in fact do know what Pedroia does better than he does. I don't know how long you've been posting on this disscussion board but a while back Jack Mankin posted something that was very interestings and proves that although hitters may swing the bat correctly, their explanation of what they're doing can still be way off. Below is the link to the post.

http://www.batspeed.com/messageboard/229265.html

Bonds believed that his bat should be angling downward to contact, but in reality (as the video proved) his bat was actually on an upward slope to the ball.

My point is that it's very possible (even more probable) for someone analyzing a swing to know what a player does better than the player himself.

The fact that you and I interpret the phrase "throwing the barrel at the ball" in two completely different ways shows how dumbed down Pedroia's explanation of his own swing is. It's not precise, it's too general, and can be interpreted differently. When I think of throwing the barrel at the ball, I conjure up images of the arms violently extending away from the body and the wrists snapping the bat through the zone in a powerless whip like motion. When you think of "throwing the barrel at the ball" you think of a well-connected swing powered by the rotating body.


"The hands are directing the path of the barrel through the ball, not around it. The lead arm will not get away from the body, because the hands are the last thing to come through."

What is this suppose to mean? Are you saying that Pedroia's bat travels in a straight line and doesn't rotate? What is the difference really between hitting "around" the ball and hitting "through" the ball? I hear this all the time and as far as I'm concerned when a player hits "around" the ball is when he is fooled by a pitch, starts his swing too early and makes contact too far out in front. When a player hits "through" the ball is when his swing is well-timed and he makes contact with the ball sort of parallel to the body.

I think that ultimately we're saying the same thing but the way we are using language to describe it is completely different. That's what makes teaching and learning a good swing so tough. We can look at the same exact clip of a major league swing, and describe it in completely different ways. This is why I agree with teacherman when he says that you have to "feel" what they feel when they swing the bat in order to truly understand it. Of course this is impossible, all we can do is look at tape and try to copy (or have our kids copy) what major leaguers do.