Posted by: The Hitting Guru () on Fri Jan 5 13:10:42 2007

> >>> Jack. Not that I disagree with anything in your post, but I believe the most important thing in hitting the outside pitch is that the hitter has to able to wait and then fire into the pitch. This means the hitter has to have the batspeed/and confidence necessary to believe he can hit the ball when it about to almost pass/pass his front shoulder. The hitter cannot be afraid to jam himself. Derek Jeter, Manny Ramirez, and David Ortiz (to name a few) do this very well. <<<
>
> Hi Guru
>
> I have over a hundred overhead views of the best hitters. Those clips reveal that with outside pitches they were making contact well out in front of the shoulder. I fact, some of Big Mac’s longest shots were outside pitches he pulled (hit outside part of the ball). His contact point on those outside pitches was made farther out in front than on many of swings at balls closer in.
>
> Guru, let us look once again at the Rose clip - http://www.youthbaseballcoaching.com/mpg/Rose.mpeg – Note how far out in front of his shoulder he made contact with this outside pitch (hit the ball square – not inside part of the ball).
>
> Jack Mankin

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Jack. Thanks for bringing that to my attention as I errored in my thought/post. I made an inherent assumption that the outside pitch debate was connected to hitting the ball to the opposite field.

In addition, my post was especially tied to helping the linear hitter. As such the linear hitter who waits will maximize his power to the opposite field by letting the ball get deeper toward the plate. In this way he can take a full cut to the ball rather than trying to meet the ball at the exact time by casting his arms outward. This assumes that the linear hitter benefits by a long sweep because to him the sweep (longer momentum ads to his power). Thus by swinging later on the outside pitch, he adds to power he would have lost by casting (and likely popping up the pitch and or hitting it weakly.)