Posted by: Jack Mankin (MrBatspeed@aol.com) on Mon Sep 15 13:55:03 2008

.>>> .Jack,I messed with the swing in the mirror a little bit today and i found that I can lower the back elbow without tilting the rear shoulder ,the shoulder tilt in wrights swing is not from lowering the elbow,I think it has to come from setting a tilted axis to hit a lower pitch than those up near the letters.When I took swings as though I was hitting a letter high fb I still had lowering of the rear elbow but with far less tilt of axis,both swings however are powered by shoulder rotation
The rose clip is not good IMO because it only shows lead arm rotation and shoulder rotation,that is not why I started this thread ,that is not my dispute we agree on that point,the rose clip does not seem to start at the load I thought we discussed that many years ago and we cannot see how high or low it is,the wright clip as many others from side show tilt or not tilt far better.
Next your hitters you evaluated sounds like they set tilt axis early and stayed with it on each pitch and did not adjust it for high pitch this would make them vulnerable to high pitches.
Qusetion,in hitting many things go on the unconscious,we tend to mostly be hitters that look for the ball below the waist,and it seems that the body reacts quicker from down to up like the ground ball we play under it and come up with the bad hop not up and go down when it stays down,is that agreeable.Therefore I think that we can stay fairly neutral but anticipate subconsciously or begin set for tilt and the lower pitch and when read a high pitch we try to adjust tilt up and forward the direction of the swing to hit this high pitch,if we just set for the high pitch I think a hitter could get to it alot more often some are even called a high ball hitter but they cannot just set or plan for high and adjust down and back for low pitch that is going the opposite way of swing.This i feel is correct because when I hit many years ago I was lead to believe I was swinging down and therefore the high pitch was the 1st one I needed to hit and I could adjust down lower as the bat came DOWN THRU THE ZONE.However the bat comes up thru the zoneso we must prepare opposite,had I a clue about what my body was trying to do my mind would not have gotten in the way nearly as much.

My point is not that shoulder rotation does not power the swing ,that is vital,I have not changed my view,my question is that before it during tht as the elbow lowers and the shoulders tilt for lower pitch [could] the muscles of the shoulders be helping or causing the tilt which would help to overcome inertia and get the bat started back quicker before shoulder rotation started and tookover powering the swing,,and could it be that since we dont have this tilt so much or it is aborted as the high pitch is read,that the lack of it along with an adjustment to be made is what causes so many to be late and under the high fb since the beginning of baseball,TIME is the cause of not catching up to the high fb but is the batspeed slowed just alittle along with more time needed to make the adjustment in the tilt the cause for high heat winning most of the time,It seems to possibly fit in the physics end of the bodies abilities in my mind and with so little new ideas coming up I thought it was worth my time to think thru.
Jack none of this takes away anything you have put in the system,just maybe it is 1 more thing that is going on to assist in the early batspeed THT,to help a hitter catch up to a lower pitch further away from him, <<<

Hi Rql

I would agree that the over-head view of Rose would not be the best angle to study PLT and initiation trajectories. I use the over-head clip because Tom discount shoulder rotation as the power source for the swing and this view appeared best for that discussion.

I would also agree that tilting the shoulders rearward does “feel” like a powerful way to initiate THT. In fact, many years ago, I considered incorporating this movement to initiate the swing. However, notes I had made from my study regarding back-elbow trajectories gave me pause to reconsider. The elbow trajectory of most top hitters did not come straight down toward the side as occurs with tilting. The elbow swept around in an arc as it lowered.

I also noted that the spine of most top hitters did not bend rearward during initiation. I spent considerable time trying to emulate the elbow trajectories and spine angle of these hitters. After hours of experimenting, I found I could generate as much, or more, rearward bat-head acceleration rotating the shoulders around a tilted axis as I could teeter-tottering the shoulders.

As I mentioned before, I also find less swing plane problems when the plane of shoulder rotation is inline with the swing plane. So, I am not saying that tilting the shoulders does not apply THT. I am saying it is not as efficient and presents more swing plane problems than rotating the shoulders about a tilted axis.

Jack Mankin