Posted by: Jack Mankin (MrBatspeed@aol.com) on Wed Mar 20 08:30:56 2002

>>> Thanks for the info. My wording should have been better. What I am puzzled by is no matter how fast or SLOW the pitch is, the ball goes always to the right. <<<

Hi JPB

Your wording was fine. I didn’t make my point clear enough. --- Regardless of the pitch speed, your daughters bat-head constantly trails her hands into the contact zone. There may be a timing element involved, but the cause is more likely mechanical. Far too many coaches place too much emphasis on extending the hands and not enough on swinging the bat-head. The problem is compounded by the fact that she can just hold the bat out and let the ball come to it. There is less need for the mechanics required to accelerate the bat perpendicular to the balls flight.

I use the heavy bag to encourage the batter to keep the hands back and accelerate the bat-head – they have to swing the bat to the bag – the bag won’t come to them – they have to generate the impact energy, not the ball. With practice they learn to bring the bat perpendicular at contact and hit more straight-away.

Jack Mankin