Posted by: Jack Mankin (MrBatspeed@aol.com) on Mon Oct 29 21:19:49 2001

>>> Jack, I will study Major's post. It seems like a reasonable response. But in the meantime, I would appreciate it if you, in your own words would also respond to my last post. I answered your question & furthermore I apologized for apparently having put words in your mouth. But you implied that you do accept the notion of throwing the bathead as opposed to throwing the hands and all I am asking is that you provide your analysis of the two different concepts. >>>

Hi Fan

Major Dan’s post did a good job of explaining the difference in mechanics of the two concepts. I consider “throwing the hands, quick hands, knob at the ball, extend the hands, and etc. as linear cues because they concentrate on accelerating the hands away from the power source – the rotating body. A batter using linear mechanics does not worry as much about “linkage” to shoulder rotation, as his swing derives its main power source from the muscles in the arms.

Rotational mechanics stress keeping the hands back (linkage) to allow shoulder rotation to accelerate the hand-path. The benefit of a circular hand-path is to rotate (or throw) the bat-head – not the hands themselves. The same is true for both top and bottom-hand-torque, their purpose is to accelerate (or throw) the bat-head into the arc of the swing plane. Neither is used to “throw” or accelerate the hands forward. Shoulder rotation and the load of generating the bat’s trajectories mainly determine the trajectory of the hands the lead-arm's rate of separation from the body.

Jack Mankin