Posted by: Bart () on Thu Oct 17 07:41:25 2002

I have a ten year old that I am working on hitting mechanics with. I'm trying not to overwelm him and make him overthink every swing, but I also want to give him the best advice out there. I am partial to Tom Emanski's methods, but read quite a bit of contradictions in several web sites (Does anyone have an opinion on that one?). I really like this site and think there is some solid baseball knowledge shared. A lot of messages on this board are dedicated to circular rotation of hands and elbow in the slot. Can someone tell me what is meant by circular rotation (Do you mean top hand over?), and elbow in slot(Is that the same as bat splitting the helmet in
half when in cocked position?)? Thanks for any help.
> >>Hi Mark,The circular hand path means that the hands are connected to shoulder rotation and are brought around in a circular motion,fingers up fingers down.To me elbow in the slot is when the swing begins the rear elbow comes down to the rear rib cage,others may have a different meaning.I well send you 2 videos of rose and Mcgwire,they can be seen in frame by frame by putting the cursor to the left of the bar below the video and dragging across slowly.Rose shows the chp well,mac shows elbow in slot.




Mark, the following is an excerpt of a recent post I made:

"I have a countless number of clips where the following observations are consistent with 90 percent of the major league hitters: (1) from initial toe touch to contact is 6 frames. (2) to narrow it down even more, at toe touch (first frame) the bat angle is generally about 30 degrees. By the end of the second frame, the heel has landed, the bat has began uncocking to the point where it is near-vertical, and the hips have rotated about 30 degrees. This is Epsteins torque position, although he doesn't get into as many specifics as I do.From this torque position, contact is 4 frames away.

At the risk of boring you with even more specifics, by the end of the 4th frame (2 frames away from contact), generally the hands/knob are even with the back knee, with the bat still not being quite parallel with the ground. 1/2 frame later (1 1/2 frames away from contact), the bat is parallel with the ground and this is the "lag position"."

I posted this excerpt because to better understand specific moments in the swing it is important to understand all phases from beginning to end.

Elbow-in-the-slot would start about "by the end of the 4th frame (2 frames away from contact), generally the hands/knob are even with the back knee, with the bat still not being quite parallel with the ground". Or, as RQL put it, "elbow in the slot is when the swing begins the rear elbow comes down to the rear rib cage". The "end" of elbow-in-the slot would be at or slightly before contact, depending on how much of an "L" the hitter has at contact. But this is assuming an inside pitch, because the more the pitch is outside, the less of an "L" at contact, and this is because on the outside pitches, starting even slightly before the "lag position" the elbow is "leaving" the slot (because the front arm is extending more and thus resulting in less of an "L" at contact).

The hand path is easy to see. From the tome the bat starts uncocking until contact, just take almost any major league swing, particularly on an inside pitch, lay out all 6 or so frames side by side and it is easily traced. I suspect the clip of Rose that RQL referred to is one posted at setpro by Tim Olson. If it's the same one, Tim added some graphics to highlight the hand path, and it is indeed a great, graphic example of the circular hand path.