Posted by: Torque (roscoethewestie@comcast.net) on Sat Jun 20 14:48:18 2009

> My 14 yr old son is a good contact hitter that rarely strikes out. He consistantly hits hard line drives. Most of them up the middle but some to all fields. He is not a big kid so he is not a power hitter type. The problem I have is that most of his hits are 4 feet or less above the ground. He rarely gets any height on the ball hitting up over the infield so most hits are singles. In batting practice he hits long balls to the fence and sometimes over, but in games only the low line drives. Any ideas as to what may be causing this?

It is timing. Batting practice pitching is slower and more predictable so the hitter has more time to set up under the ball. Game time pitching is faster and there is less time to set up under the ball and the pitch is less predictable. You can take faster BP or move the pitcher closer to the hitter. The hitter should understand they need to concentrate on setting up a little sooner and getting under the ball come game time. However, if your son is playing higher level baseball and doesn't have homerun power then skilled outfielders are going to catch the ball more so be careful what you wish for.

Your elite major league power hitters have faster batspeed and can actually set up under game time pitches like they are playing wiffle ball. Really shows how important bat speed is and how your long ball hitters have it. There isn't much time to consistently camp out under an upper nineties fastball and get on plane.

I think the hitters that have this type of batspeed and reflexes don't really have to think about it or adjust for it. So working on increasing permanent batspeed is probably the best solution.