Posted by: Jack Mankin (MrBatspeed@aol.com) on Tue Dec 28 00:30:19 1999

Hi Tim & Everyone

First let me wish you all a belated Merry Christmas and a fulfilling 2000. Over the past few days our home, here in Sunny California, has been blessed with family and friends from all over the frozen Midwest and points east. Also I have been busy outlining the topics I want to cover in the video I am producing. So, I have allowed my e-mail replies and post to the site to get ahead of me.

I have though taken time to review the post here at Batspeed and some of the other sites. I am finding it quite refreshing to read post from coaches who are actually searching for the true mechanics of the baseball swing. Some post were insightful and deserve everyone’s consideration. I think Paul (Setpro.com) and I deserve some of the credit for giving coaches a different way of looking at things and the forum for freely expressing their thoughts and findings. I have no problem with coaches who may have erred in their conclusions and need to rethink their position. This is a far cry from those who are mainly looking for some reason to justify a position because it is a long held belief or it’s in their best interest.

I hate to beat a dead horse but I would like to point out that a batter can’t choose whether or not he will use torque and a angular hand-path to develop his bat speed. Those are the only two major forces that can. It’s just a matter of how much and how long his mechanics will supply them. That smooth, loose ever-accelerating swing of a great hitter is the result of these forces being constantly supplied from initiation to contact. The tense jerky look comes from a batter who has a straight hand thrust and tries to explode at the end.

Tim, I am glad to here of the progress your son is making with rotational mechanics. Something I was writing today for the video may help in his advancement. I was discussing the “inward turn” and why it was so important to a good swing. --- The inward turn is just that, a turn. It’s not the shifting back of the axis or the hands. It’s a turn. There are two main benefits that result from this move. The shoulders will rotate somewhat more than the hips during the turn. This stretches the muscles of the torso so that there will be less slack when the hips start to rotate. But even of more importance is the position the turn brings the hands to.

The forces applied to the bat during initiation produces trajectories that will set the tone for the entire swing. It is very important that the first directional movement of the hands be perpendicular (or as close as possible to it) to the line of flight of the ball. This will induce the greatest amount of angular displacement into the bat and propel the hands into the correct path. ---The inward turn should bring the hands, center of axis and the pitchers mound in line. If the batter will allow the rotation of the body (stationary axis) against the lead arm to accelerate the hands, their first movement will be perpendicular to that line.

The top hand can also aid in getting the hands started in the correct direction. We will discuss this later. Hope this helps. It’s a lot easier to show than write about.

Jack Mankin