Posted by: Chuck (jcsherwood8458@sbcglobal.net) on Thu Apr 21 18:54:27 2011

Hi Jack,

I know that Mike Epstein and others like to say that a hitter can only cover 1/2 of the plate and that the hitter needs to look either for a pitch middle in or a pitch middle away. Perhaps this is true against the very elite pitchers, I'm not aware of your opinion on this.

What do you think about the following approach to hitting, especially against average pitchers? Since we know that hitting the outside pitch well requires the application of THT, a hitter should first look for the outside pitch and prepare or begin to apply THT. If the pitch then happens to be more of an inside location, the hitter can pull his hands in and speed up shoulder rotation to adjust to it. In the opposite approach, if the hitter was looking for an inside pitch, he would set up to use mostly rotation with little or no THT. If the pitch was in fact outside, there would be little adjustment the hitter could make because it would be too late to apply THT and the front shoulder would probably be flying open. He would at best just slap the outside pitch and not drive it. So wouldn't it be best, especially for younger hitters, to first look to drive the outside pitch and then adjust to inside pitches, rather than the opposite approach? I think this really keeps your swing honest and on track.

Thanks,
Chuck