Posted by: Red Dog (gwils@brdwlaw.com) on Thu Oct 28 13:05:32 2010

My son swings rotational and has been hitting this way for three years. He is a senior in high school. I agree with your statement that a rotational hitter can develop a "hole" in their swing that results in pop-ups and balls driven into the ground. The reason for this is because they no longer swing rotational. If the rotational batter brings his hands forward in a linear manner during the swing, he/she will have a problem making contact with the ball. If the rotational batter does not torque the bat or get the bat into the slot before they rotate, there will be a problem. Hitter's with strong top hands keep the bat almost verticle and start rotation with the bat verticle. This stops the bat from getting on plane and you will drive the ball into the ground. You can see this when the batter drops his back elbow to his side but the bat does not move, it stays verticle. I guess you can say rotational hitter's have a "hole". I would say these hitter's are hitting with serious flaws in their swings and those swings are not rotational or linear. I have seen this with my son and we were only able to figure out the problem through video and looking at his swing frame by frame. Once we got him back to a true rotational swing, he started crushing the ball and hitting line drives. Any batter (rotational or linear) that gets fooled by the pitch and ends up way ahead of the pitch will also have problems. That is a timing issue or sometimes the pitcher wins.