Posted by: tom.guerry (tom.guerry@kp.org) on Mon Apr 9 11:48:49 2001

jack...i made the following comments at tim olson's site and i would appreciate your comments as well........since the last bug squashing thread i have made some observations and have drawn some conclusions.....my observations started when i noticed on film that when my son was taking dry cuts his back foot was simply spinning & the back heel was hardly getting off the ground......however in his game swings he was not at all spinning on the back foot and in fact was somewhat "dragging" the "bug".......and what was the difference in his dry cuts and his game swings?....well, for some reason in his dry cuts he had a medium-width stance and was striding only about 3 inches....in his game swings he had a medium-width stance but was striding about 9 inches....my tentative conclusion was that how narrow or how wide you end up after the stride will be a facor in how much your back foot "spins" vs. how much your back foot drags ( and on film the back foot dragging a moderate amount "looks" much more correct than a back foot that is simply spinning)...............then i went back to my old video clips (most of which were downloaded from setpro).....i noticed that weightshift hitters and rotational hitters alike DO NOT SPIN ON THE BACK FOOT, THEY "DRAG THE BUG!!!......and i also noticed that at launch position their two feet are fairly wide......my conclusions (finally): (1) a hitter who ends up too narrow will spin on the back foot, which means that anti-bug squashers have a valid point, much more so than i had previously thought ...(2) it seems that almost all major leaguers (based on my non-scientific sampling) end up wide and do not squash the bug...THEY DRAG THE BUG!!!.......will yanyone agree or disagree with my conclusion that there is a connection between distance of the two feet (at launch position) and back -foot dragging vs. back -foot spinning?.......all comments, negative and positive would be greatly appreciated....respectfully, grc....

grc-

I agree that most hitters I see in the majors drag the toe behind the front foot.This is an equal and opposite reaction to the momentum transferring up from the hips to the torso.Virtually all successful ballplayers have learned to do this to generate power for the throw or swing.

However,as Jack has pointed out,not so many transfer this to the bat in a way that efficiently creates batspeed.Ideally you want good transfer mechanics sequenced after sufficient power generation which means contact after the toe starts to drag and before the hips go "up"(stop).

At lower levels of play,especially in fastpitch,you do see kids just squishin the bug and leaving weight back and not coming up on the toe and not starting toe drag before contact.These kids not only transfer energy poorly from the torso to the bat,they don't get much energy in the torso to begin with,or they start sucking energy out of the torso before the hips can get it into the torso which gives you this dead backside.