Posted by: Chris O'Leary (chris@chrisoleary.com) on Fri Nov 3 14:42:44 2006

"find a clip of rose hitting an outside pitch or changeup and see how circular his hands are....they won't be. too many one-trick pony's here."

First, good hitters will tend to try to tilt their torsos over to hit an outside pitch rather than let their hands fly out.

Second, the whole point of throwing off-speed pitches is to mess up the hitter's timing and force them to swing with less than ideal mechanics. It's EXTREMELY hard to hit the ball well after being fooled by a change-up because your timing and mechanics are destroyed.

One of the reasons I follow Jack's stuff is that if you look at the swings of good hitters, when they get fooled their mechanics tend to look "linear." Their weight is on their front foot and their swings are all arm-y.