Posted by: Major Dan (markj89@charter.net) on Tue Apr 17 10:52:43 2001

I am one of the best batting cage hitters I've ever seen, but when I face a live pitcher, I hit more weak ground balls than anything else. Could this be because the ball is coming from a lower point at the cage? It seems that a "level" swing is different in a cage than it is against a pitcher. Perhaps I am learning bad habits by hitting line drives at a batting cage. Is there something I can do to correct this? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Chris -
The pitching machine will help you groove your swing and let you work on batspeed / seeing and hitting fast pitches. It will not help your timing in live situations. Too much cage time without live pitching can mess you up.
The cues you use to time your cage swing are different than the cues you use to time a real pitcher. Grounders against live pitchers suggests that you are late.
What you need to do is refine what you are looking at, and what you are using to time and trigger your swing against live pitchers. You need to do more than look for the ball after it is thrown.