Posted by: Joe (joe.flowers@nofreewill.com) on Mon May 16 19:38:27 2011

Thanks for the ideas guys. It gives me some good ideas to think about.

I'm afraid to change too much at once, but my instruction so far has been this:

1. Still hit up the path of the oncoming pitched ball, and don't uppercut the ball to try to hit it in the air because you're more likely to cut across the path of the incoming ball and miss it.

2. Try to strike the ball while the knob of the bat is above the head of the bat relative to the ground.

3. Hit the ball at least a little bit closer toward the pitcher, in front of the plate instead of letting it get deeper in the plate at contact.

My thought is that if you can do these 3 things (along with the other items that Jack teaches), then the bat should be "naturally" on the upswing. I think the grounders are coming too frequently because the ball isn't getting struck soon enough, so the bat has bottomed out or is going down on the swing instead of coming up at contact.

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