quote:Originally posted by micmeister:
Williams was not just a player. He was a Manager, hitting Coach, and author of books on hitting. He lived, slept and ate hitting. The last player to hit over .400.
Career stats:
BA .344 7th all time and best since 1960
OB% .482 1st all time
SL% .634 2nd all time
OPS 1.11 2nd all time
You can have Lau, I'll take Williams. Take Lau's best student and compare him to Williams and then look at the student on film and see if he actually did what Lau taught. I doubt it.
I know Williams was a player, manager for Senators and wrote a book on hitting. Yeah, the pull hitting can just murder the pitches inside and middle, but since the smart pitchers know that they generally cannot really hit outside pitches well (Williams hit less than .250 on low outside; take a look at where pitchers generally pitch to Giambi) I consider it as a big advantage. George Brett could hit to all fields (and I do see that he does what Lau teaches, his swings are similar/same to Lau's students' swings in his DVD), under Lau, Reggie Jackson hit his only .300 in 1980 (under Lau's teaching) and half of his HR's that year went to opposite fields. I can list more. I don't know if people denounce Lau's methods while knowing how his mechanics work (which is the worst thing that could happen when talking about 'gurus'...)