Posted by: Jack Mankin (MrBatspeed@aol.com) on Thu Dec 10 10:49:05 2009

>>> Jack,
Wondering if you have any closeups of ideal wrist/hand postion at impact. It appears to me that some high level hitters have relatively flat wrists at impact. While others apppear to have a slightly "bowed" bottom hand wrist, and slightly "flexed" top hand wrists. My son seems to have his top hand wrist extremely flexed. This seems to promote his hands rolling over early. As a result, he hits the ball solidly to the opposite field, but really struggles hitting anything but week ground balls to the pull side. After reading some of your thoughts, I have suggested to him that he really loosen up his top hand and allow it to "slide" during his swing. This seems to be helping. My thought is that pictures of the better postions would give him a verbal cue he could use to obtain a better wrist position through the swing. As always, thanks for all of your work and help. <<<

Hi Jake

Below is an excerpt from a post that may address the problem you describe. After reading the excerpt, pay close attention to the trajectories of the lead-elbow of the batters in this video clip - Role of the lead-arm - I think that by comparing your son's lead-elbow trajectory to theirs may identify the problem.

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Giving advice on someone's swing that you have not seen can only be guesswork. But I will give you my best guess. --- Most often, results as you describe are caused from the wrist starting to roll over before contact. Premature rolling of the wrist has been the downfall of many hitters.

The rolling over of the wrist is a natural part of the swing when it occurs at the proper time. The wrist will naturally roll when both arms approach full extension. With good shoulder rotation (belly button at the pitcher at contact) both arms will not reach full extension until long after the bat passes through the contact zone. But if the batter mainly uses his arms to accelerate the bat and has limited shoulder rotation the arms may reach full extension before the bat reaches contact.

Another frequent cause for the wrist to prematurely roll is from allowing the lead elbow to collapse downward toward the batter's side prior to contact. The lead elbow must remain pointing up into the plane of the swing through the contact zone. When the elbow prematurely collapses, the hands also prematurely role from the "palm up/palm down" position. This action causes the hands to dip and the bat-head to rise. The result is most often weak ground balls.

Keep in mind that the "Keep your shoulder in there" rule is good advise during the stride and getting into a good launch position. But rotation of the shoulders is what should accelerate the hands as the swing is initiated. -- So practice keeping the hands back and allowing your bodies rotation to accelerate your hands while keeping the lead-elbow up in the plane. --- This should solve the problem you described.
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Jack Mankin