Posted by: Joe (joe.flowers@nofreewill.com) on Tue Oct 5 18:48:58 2010

> Younger kids may get away with this style because the ball being pitched is not moving extremely fast or there is no movement on "offspeed" pitches at a young age. Once these kids > hit high school and beyond,

Hi Rick,

I'm glad you come with a different perspective. That helps all of us in the end.

> Albert Puljos is used as an example...ok, yes his video shows this "rotational," but Puljos also uses what you call "linear," which also use rotational hips.

I think Chris O'Leary defines the difference the best. Chris defines rotational hitting as the path the hands take. Nothing else. Rotational hitting is the hands taking a circular path. Everything else sutdied here is how to maximize the effect of this hand path. Linear hitting is where the hands are driven in a straight line or near straight line all the way to contact.

I have seen a kid who started out to be the best hitter on one of our teams go to a linear hitting coach and his hitting production immediately resulted in no hits, none. He has recovered some but is well short of the path he was on originally. It was amazing. I can't believe that his father did not recognize what had happened and so abruptly. It was obvious.

For me, like it or not, rotational hitting is what the vast majority of the pros do. Or, it is certainly what I perceive the pros doing without question. Whether they are aware of what they are doing on video is irrelevant.

> I agree there is more torque with this hand path, but this hand path IS NOT successful in every count and every pitch. This swing is about the home run, not for a team average style
> of hitting.

I don't know the stats on it. I know that when I watch the pros hit, Rotational is what I see.

>
> Ted Williams is also brought up in this discussion, but different era and style of pitching...have you seen some of the "successful" swings back then?

I've seen a couple of Babe Ruth's home run swats and one very interesting thing to me is that the hands stay very close to his body while he is rotating like heck.

> Ok, off my soap box...last thing - plese check out www.sportskool.com and find Tony Gwynn's videos

I have watched these. In fact, another coach pointed this out to me and I pointed out this Tony Gwynn video here.
I think Tony Gwynn's style matched what he wanted to acheive and was able to do. He had a lot of success. A great player.

> , also Ripken baseball...these are solid swings for average and opportunity to hit the long ball, after mastering seeing the ball and hitting for average.

I got started on the Ripken videos (and although I believe the Ripken Defense and Pitching videos are must haves, must see, must study, lather, rinse, repeat) that method of hitting was killing my son's batting average. Grounding to the short stop almost every time. Cal also holds the record for hitting the most balls that lead to double plays. I like Cal a lot, a ton. I owe a lot of the success my son has had to him, but not in the hitting arena.

>
> Thanks for your time everyone.

Thanks Rick.

I'll stand on my head and drink water all day if that will help my sons' hitting. I have to rethink and change instruction all the time to help my sons, but I don't see myself changing on this anytime soon. The evidence supports rotational hitting as the most likely path of longer term hitting success.

If you have MLB hitting examples on YouTube or other, then please let us see it along with your explanation of what you see happening. I think that would be most enlightening and would love to see it.

Best wishes and I hope you will reply with more of your perspective.

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