Kyle Boddy posted:Hit the ball hard. Hit it in the air. If your son's instructor gets him to do both more regularly, you have a good one. If your son does not do this, you may not have a good one.
People in this thread can disagree all they want with the idea that 2 + 2 = 4, but no matter how hard they try, adding 2 + 2 does not equal 5.
Hitting the ball to the pull side in the air hard yields the best results in all of baseball. It's proven. There is no debate here. Increasing contact percentage and ability to adjust also matter. But do not forget what matters most - demolishing baseballs in the air. And line drives are in the air, before anyone complains about fly balls.
What I bolded is the most important. I agree with a lot of what you're saying and mostly the main point: Line drives = good. But the biggest problem is that many hitters are so fixated on elevating the baseball and buying into the idea that ground balls are for chumps that they can't adjust. When it works it works, but when it doesn't the result is a K or a weak pop out 90% of the time. They can't hit situationally, they aren't capable of making productive outs. I can get behind the theory that elevation is better for hitters, but it needs to be executed better. I see too many hitters batting .247 with 28 HRs who can't move a runner over from 2nd to 3rd with no outs because they are trying to hit the ball 500ft down the line. Either the approach is flawed or hitters are not executing the method at the level it needs to be. Which tells me that the approach is not for everybody. Guys like Lemahieu and Gardner are much better served working down and hitting for average than hitting 16 HRs and batting .260. Big guys that don't run well, not so much. I'm all for listening to the numbers, but when the numbers show that a player isn't productive, there has to be a different approach.