Posted by: Fastpitch Trainer (Coach@Fastpitchtrainer.com) on Tue Dec 9 06:18:56 2008

>
> Hi THG
>
> I have often pondered the question you raise. -- Would a baseball hitter need to change his swing plane for pitches angling up in the zone rather than downward? I got my answer studying hitter’s swing planes during the resent World Series. I do not recall the ‘submarine’ pitches name but I noted his release point was only 8 to 9 inches above the ground. That is about 18 inches lower than the release point of most fastpitch pitchers.
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> I had taped the entire series and found no swing plane adjustments for regular to ‘submarine’ releases. The planes were about the same for both with any given pitch height (knees, belt, letters).
>
> Jack Mankin


Jack,

I like what you said here. The plane of the pitch is only relevant to a hitter during their hitting/contact zone. I've always thought that pitchers that release from a drastically different arm angle have success from disrupting a hitters ability to pick the ball up, not moving the ball entirely different over the last few feet that the ball travels.

Then in Fastpitch you have the coaches that want to argue that, "well in fastpitch you have a ball that rises so you have to compensate for that." I reply that, yes, the ball may be higher than the pitchers release point at contact, but over the last few feet the ball travels it flattens out to a 0 degree angle, or in a lot of cases, only has about 1 degree of downward movement. The rise ball gives the appearance it is moving up, but measuring pitch angle always shows that during the hitting zone, when things matter, the ball is not moving up.

Mark Mulvany
Coach@FastpitchTrainer.com