Posted by: Torque (roscoethewestie@comcast.net) on Thu Jan 28 12:58:28 2010

> hello everyone Every year some talented and one time major league prospects are released from baseball. while they are still in the minor leagues ,because they couldnt hit pro level breaking balls. I have heard many solutions hit the fastball early in the count so you wont have to hit the curve or slider latter in the count. Swing were the pich is going to wind up not were you first see it. Practice the stride then delay the swing. Is it a reconition problem ?Is there a fix? Is the solution reconize the pitch and keep a good rotational swing? I do realize that each player is different and what can help one batter might not help another .I would appreciate your thoughts on hitting quilty breaking balls or is it that very few can do it?

I was told by a current major league player 2 weeks ago that they teach a term I have never heard and it is called rear leg extension. Basically, he was saying they teach hitters how to extend their rear leg into a firm front side when they get fooled and get out in front of a pitch. I have never googled the term before but I remember instances where I have seen Manny Ramirez hit a baseball 400 feet even when he was fooled using rear leg extension. It is difficult to do and it is still rotational hitting. The handpath and rotation are the same. The center of gravity is more to the front side of the hitter at contact.

I think pitch recognition is crucial and the ability to hit opposite field is critical on away off speed pitches. Hitters develop a mental database of pitches and this database needs to include a lot of offspeed pitches.

The best way I have been told to hit a slider is to hit the white dot which is very visible. Curveball comes high out of the pitchers hand. Changeup is often pronated more out of the hand.

My opinion is that pitch recognition has to occur very early in the loading phase of the swing. If the pitch is recognized late and the hands have already started rotating the bathead back to the pitcher it is too late to adjust offspeed.

I'm going to see if I can find anything on rear leg extension. When I have seen a player crush a low pitch using rear leg extension it is impressive. Manny Ramirez comes to mind on this.