Posted by: rql () on Thu Jun 14 15:25:25 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......
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> see post by jack mankin wed jan 10 00:42:41 2001
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> ray porco
> > >>>GRC,I had this discussion recently with someone and I recalled that near the end of my career I was hitting the away pitch in 2 different ways.One was as you described and yes you hit the inside part of the ball.the 1st was as your son does,as we were alike,and you do not open your hips much as you swing everything is more linear,to me this is where the timing is spread out over a longer window allowing for more timing error yet linedrive ability is still high.Powerful line drives are seldom here though.r Remember it takes little bat speed imo to hit a hard linedrive on an 85mph pitch when the bat/ball collision is correct[fat of bat centered on center of ball].Now the 2nd way GRC,is to be rotational and yes wait longer and yes do the hip turn and all,but their is a key to it,maybe a couple.What I feel in my hips when I pull is the front heel coming down then the front hip starts to open then the rear knee is driving the rear hip open and you pull more longer smoother,pitch away however you must generate the power later over a shorter period so put them closer together more as a unit a pop into the turn because it is only going to go to ss where the ball is going right.@nd the hands and shoulders will not go far not pulling long and slow through the zone rather another close pop and think of the rear shoulder driving more into the swing more later rql