Posted by: tolson () on Fri Mar 15 10:14:44 2002

""""My son is a junior in high school and since he was old enough to play has had a good eye for the ball and has always batted well. His freshman year he played varsity ball the entire season and batted .595."""""

If he batted that well, you obviously did something right in the past.

You need to get video and quick. You need to figure out what he's doing wrong. I biggie is any mechanics that pull your weight away from the ball. If he see's too much underhand toss he can develop a problem where he is too quick to react (with his body) to what the pitcher is doing. So he might anticipate to the fact everything now starts out higher by raising up. Or since there is more variety to the locations and movement on the full distance pitch, the batter will tend to open up the zone and often open up the body early.

Maybe he needs to "stay within himself". The ball is going to drop or stay high. He needs to stay within his legs and allow the ball to do just that and keep your head down and in. On the inside ones he must fight the habit of opening early and putting himself in a bad situation middle-out.

He needs to see live pitching too--there is no substitute. Believe me, I've been there with our coach he thinks hitting is only quick hands annd stay back.