Posted by: Mark H. (mark_h45@hotmail.com) on Sun Dec 9 14:33:12 2001

I've noticed one thing over the past two years of playing. 2 years ago after the season ended i knew i did good but i knew i could do better. I took a couple of swings in front of a mirrir and noticed something. My swing had uppercut written all over it. After studying it for a while i noticed it was because of my stance. My elbow was too high in the air and my bat was pointing to the sky too much in my stance. After asking a couple coaches about wha i should do i knew what i had to do. I had to learn how to hit again in a completely different way. I focuse on making my swing more level. I made sure when i was up to bat my elbows were pointing down so for one my swing would be quicker and two i made sure my bat head wasn't pointing to the sky as much anymore. After practicing long and hard in the off season my swing looked more compact. When the season came along i was hitting more singles into doubles and more doubles into triples. I also noticed i had a better advantage on high pitching. My advice to all hitters is to focuse on having a somewhat level swing. its fine if you want to have a uplift in your swing if you wanna try to hit home runs, but thats about all your gonna do hit fly balls and pop ups and the high pitches are gonna kill ya. Fly balls may look pretty but 9 out of 20 times thier gonna be caught. Ground balls and line drives is what you want. Thank you reading.

Tony,

Level compared to what?

As far as ground balls being a good outcome for the hitter, why do we teach pitchers to try to induce ground balls? Seems like either the pitching coaches must be wrong or hitting coaches who preach ground balls must be wrong. They can't both be right. Of course if you are talking about Ichiro, I suppose that might be another case.:)

Mark H.