Posted by: Torque (roscoethewestie@comcast.net) on Wed May 6 15:18:07 2009

> >>> Have him hit the center of the baseball or the inside of the baseball as opposed to the outside of the ball. You shouldn't be casting your arms if you are hitting the center to inside of the ball. My guess is he is pulling the ball and the only way to pull the ball is to hit the outside of the ball. Have him work on hitting all balls right up the middle. The tee is the best place to correct this. <<<
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> Hi Torque
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> Although I have no problem with batters pulling the ball, I agree with you that they should practice hitting the ball straight-away. I also agree that "casting" can be a problem in the context you used the term. However, I would like to take this opportunity point out to the readers that I feel linear thinking has given the term "Casting" a bum rap.
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> The post below from the Archives explains my reasoning and I would appreciate your thoughts.
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> <a href="http://www.batspeed.com/messageboard/3751.html">Re: "Casting"</a>
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> Jack Mankin

Hey Jack,

I work so much around kids so my perspective comes solely from this view and my own hitting. The two most important things I get from your site is the THT and BHT and most importantly the elbow slot. Kids pick up the THT and BHT pretty easily but the elbow slot is harder for them to execute and harder for me right handed. So my approach has been to make sure they understand the elbow (L) slot first and practice it a lot because it is so important in getting leverage on the ball. Because kids have to have minimal commands to keep it simple I tend to stay away from the term casting in favor of maintaining teaching the L slot. I would tend to speak more in terms of getting the bat head to the ball.

When I began working with my son when he was 7 or 8 we worked almost exclusively on hitting inside pitches to maintain the L slot. I realized this was a significant deficiency to my right handed hitting but I had a very difficult time overcoming 30 or 35 years of incorrect right handed swinging. I incorporated the L slot into my left hand swing and really started hitting significantly further. So perhaps I am a little overzealous about terms such as casting or hands to the ball. So many linear guys have overtaken the terms casting and hands to the ball that I think it could get confusing for a kid to hear these terms.

I like the simplicity of what you teach and think the fact that you use limited terms: THT, BHT, CHP, L slot is very concise and simple communication which translates to better hitting results. The linear guys focus so much on the hands that if they want to own terms such as casting hands or hands to the ball then they can own the terms because it is better than sharing the same language because we know power can't be focused on the hands but power has to be focused on the leverage and speed created by THT, BHT, L Slot, CHP.

You are right though about casting because you do have to extend to get the outside pitch. I just wish the linear guys as you say didn't own the term. Maybe instead of the term casting we are talking about extending the L from the body to go for the outside pitch or to pull the ball.

Thanks for taking the time to undertake your study and for keeping it simple. My son didn't get a single pitch to hit in 3 at bats last night. He got a high outside fastball on one decent pitch. He made poor contact and hit it opposite field light tower high 235 feet and about 3 feet foul. During the winter he took 40 bp pitches put 9 out and hit a 65 mph pitch 280 or 290 foot line drive that was still going so hard it almost knocked the bark off the top of a wet pine tree. Has hit 77 MPH batspeed and is routinely low 70's at a young 12. Frankly I'm a little scared throwing him BP as he has left contusions on me a couple of years ago that remain and shattered my phone in my pocket a year and a half ago. Last year he almost hit a coach on the third base side. Ball went passed his head and the coach didn't even have time to blink. It would have been a trip to the ER. He has almost knocked 2 L screens over this year when he hit the edge of the metal. They rocked back on legs. He is a baby too, medium sized and nowhere near physical maturity.