Posted by: ray porco () on Mon Jun 11 20:50:09 2001

I’m going to get into itty bitty details.....i hope these details don’t sound too trivial for you, but they are important to my understanding of tophand torque on an outside pitch......let’s take a lefthanded hitter, and more specifically, a lefthanded hitter who throws right-handed......for an inside pitch, i can clearly understand that at launch, the first initial movement of the swing is the knob moving roughly down at about a 45 degree angle and slightly away from the body until the hands reach their maximum distance from the body...and to me , this roughly forms the first half of the circular hand path....................eventually the bathead also roughly follows a circular path, and for the inside pitch the bat contacts the outside part of the ball (perhaps an inch or so to the left of center?)..........................so the path of the bathead is simply an extension of the hand path.........and the bat contacts the ball at roughly a +30 or +45 degree angle ( relative to thefront edge of home plate)...................but for an outside pitch would you agree or disagree that the optimum bat angle is about -15 degrees or so and that you are contacting the INSIDE part of the ball (maybe 1 inch to the right of center?)?..................because , except for the powerful mcgwires of the world, if you contact the ball other than the inside portion/have the bat angle parallel to home or even worse a +30 degree angle, you will simply hit a ground ball to 2b...................so...........if you can make sense of , and agree with my theory of optimum bat angle/bat-ball contact point for and outside pitch, then it seems that this is incompatible with a tophand torque swing.......because, in order to create a -15 degree bat angle needed to strike the inside part of the ball, after launch the first initial movement CAN NOT BE in a circular, clockwise direction as it is on the inside pitch......i have experimented and experimented, and the only way to create a -15 degree bat angle is to INITIALLY bring the hands slightly in (i.e., opposite direction of what you would do for an inside pitch) a few inches.......then it is a sort-of pushing the hands to the outside part of the plate with the hands leading the bat....................so...........if you agree with my assumptions regarding bat angle, etc for the outside pitch, but yet you feel that it is still compatible with top hand torque, please explain how initially having the know go in a roughly clockwise position can help rather than hinder you in achieving a -15 degree bat angle.....................and if you disagree with the notion of -15 degree bat angle/bat-ball contact on the inside part of the ball, then please explain how a technique, namely THT can be used without pulling the outside pitch..............................i hope you can make sense of all of this....it may sound trivial but to me it’s of profound importance.....respectfully, grc......



see post by jack mankin wed jan 10 00:42:41 2001

ray porco
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