Posted by: grc (grcrackel@yahoo.com) on Thu May 18 21:01:15 2000

> > > i was intrigued by your question because my 18-year-old son throws right and bats left...i don't see him as having any advantages in applying torque...in fact, he has the opposite problem of many hitters....he hits everything to left/left-center, but he can not pull the ball to right field, at least for line drives...when he hits to left which is most of the time he hits line drives...when he hits to the right side, it is usually a groundball....i am sure that this problem is related to his bottom arm being the dominent arm and it's causing his arm to pull in tooooooooo close to the body...a real severe "inside-out" swing that countless coaches and instructors have been unable to identify a solution for...example...one instructor said he needs to "stay inside the ball", "take the knob and hands straight to the ball" and proceeded to prescribe the "fence drill"!!!! his problem is having the hands toooo "inside the ball" and this instructor prescribed the "fence drill"!!!!
> > > Knight1285@aol.com
>
> One thought to ponder....Is the arm too close to the body or is the body too close to the arm? There is a big difference in results even if the description sounds the same. Your son sounds like a classic weight shift hitter with the inside-out swing & line shots to the opposite field. May be nothing to change if it works for him. Just the same if he uses the same approach on inside pitches, it is not suprising that he is not happy with the results. I'm guessing that the problem with inside pitches is not with the hands. More than likely he does not turn aggressively enough with his hips and shoulders to allow the hands room to get through properly on an inside pitch.
>
> Tough question - does he make the effort to rework his inside pitch stroke with countless drills & swings off the tee. Or does he leave well-enough alone and not risk messing up his effectiveness on middle to outside pitches.
>
> One final thought. Be leary of coaches or instructors who think that throwing the hands or bat knob at the ball is good advise. The theory is partially valid, but many young hitters take the advise too literally and end up lunging to the ball and making contact too close to the handle. Better advise for almost any style of hitting is to get the hands through the hitting zone while going after the ball with the fat part of the bat. yes, arm is too close to the body , he hits everything to cf/opposite field and probably his style is weight-shift...i think his "lag" is the root of his problem and his "lag" is probably due to him throwing right but batting left .....look at a major league hitter from the side view...when he has completed the first half of his swing,the hips are almost fully rotated, the top arm is in an "L" position with the knuckles facing straight at you the viewer, the bat has not quite reached horizontal plane yet and if you were to draw a vertical line from the ground to the hands that vertical line would be about half way between the two feet............bear with me because this is a concept that has not got nearly the discussion that it deserves....the hands at the lag position are somewhat of an axis (although the "axis" does a little but not much more forward movement from this point)from which the bat starts it's downward and then eventually upward movement...the bathead is taking a roughly semi-circular path....my son's problem is that he draws his hands in so much that when you view his lag position (where the bat has quite yet reached horizontal position),(a) his top arm is in the "L" position but the knuckles are facing more in the direction of the shortstop (he hits left-handed)instead of the viewer (b)instead of his hands being about half way between the 2 feet they are almost at a point just inside the front foot.....now, from this point (his "axis")for the bat to be able to contact an inside pitch, instead of the bathead traveling in a roughly semi-circular path the bat has to travel in more of a "U"-shaped path...obviously this is an inefficeient path to the ball and if he does pull the ball it will usually be with the bat still traveling down and he hits a grounder to 1b or 2b.......i am convinced that my son being right-throw/left-hit is causing that bottom arm to pull in to close to the body, resulting in a poor lag position...the bottom arm being the culprit because it, after all is the dominent arm.............THE BIG QUESTION....HOW TO FIX IT???? in closing (yes, finally!!!!) i would like to apologize for making this into a thesis on the LAG position, but (1)look at pictures (sideview)...most major leaguers have a lag position as i described (2) i think that there is a lot of theories on hitting that could be proven or disproven by using the lag position as a reference.....in other words, i think that a good lag position has a tremendous amount of significance that has been grossly overlooked....