Posted by: Major Dan (markj89@charter.net) on Wed Jan 9 05:17:14 2002

There is one thing I would like to find out. Is swinging down on the ball a good way to swing. I know when I first started swinging like that when I would hit on a indoor pitching machine I started hitting alot of ground balls, and line drives ever so often. But after about a week or two I noticed that my batspeed was quicker, my swing was shorter, I was hitting low and high pitches with a more level swing, and I was hitting more ground balls and line drives, I hit a pop up rarely. I know that some people have said it isn't good because you hit a tremendous amount of ground balls, but I guess its not applying to myself. The pop-ups I could say are decreasing because I think that when swinging down you really cut down your chances of getting under the ball. I only see a handful of players swinging down today, but one I could say definitley stands out is Paul O'neill. He may of not hit .300 every year in his career, but he was a consistant hitter and from myself watching him, he could hit every pitch. He was probably in my mind the toughest player to strikeout in baseball. He worked that count to the end and never gave in. He was a line drive hitter who hit frozen ropes and ground balls. So after explaining why I think it make's myself a more consistant line drive hitter, do you think that swinging down on the ball is the way to swing a bat?
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> at least in the major leagues i think a ground ball home run is extremely rare.....to hit a home run you need to put the ball in the air......grc...

In typical baseball circles, swinging down on the ball is taught to avoid looping under the ball and upper cutting.
There are plenty of Little League kids, especially the early growers, who circle their hands, loop and uppercut and can crush those 42 MPH fastballs. Unfortunately, they can't hit real pitching.
Common wisdom is swinging down shortens the swing.
I think the mechanics suggested here are that you neither swing down or up at the ball. You rotate your shoulders, pull the bat into the shoulder rotation and into the swing plane - ie, you swing AT the ball. The point is to hit the back of the ball, not the top or the bottom. Slight angles may exist - the ever popular 'the pitch is 10 degrees down, swing 10 degrees up' idea.
Most likely you adjusted your downward swing to level off with the ball and started hitting line drives.
IMO swinging down on the ball is a cue - something you 'try' to do as an exaggeration in order to get the correct result - leveling off on the ball. Don't take it literally.