Batting Style - One hand or two?

I would be interested in hearing why he believes it is a must!

I agree w/ PG...what is his reasoning?

Maybe he keeps getting hit with the bats!

Thanks PG and JD.I take from your answers that you do not agree with the idea. Neither do I. It is a problem because my son is an incoming freshman and the coach will be his coach in high school. Therefore I don't think I should question him.

He watched my son play pre-high gold glove league this summer, where he led the team in all batting stats. It has gotten back to me that he has an eye on my son, but doesn't like his batting style, which I can best describe as being very similar to Griffey. I don't want him to change because he is successful with what he does, but this is a problem I never anticipated.

What to do?

Letting go of the top hand after contact eases some of the stress on the back, especially for those with big cuts.

Sluggo. Some coaches believe that taking a hand off the bat in the follow through will lead to bad habits. They think that it will lead to not using the backside correctly and that the swing path will get long. They think keeping two hands on will help keep the swing shorter and compact. Also most coaches who stress the two hand finish think that over time and repitition and many swings everyday that the top hand begins to come off the bat earlier and earlier in the swing and will lead to the hand coming off very near contact.

All of this is unfounded but things I have heard coaches say who don't subscribe to a one handed finish.

Someone whose advice I respect told me that this an outdated line of thinking and that "the game has passed him by".

Does anyone agree? or not?

Sluggo, Disagree. You'll find guys in the bigs who do it both ways. You'll even see guys do it in one at bat and not do it in the next at bat.

If your hitting the ball hard and consistently I'd bet your coach wouldn't even notice. So start hitting and it will take care of it self.

Thanks for the helpful advice Vance. What you are telling me helps me understand what the coach is thinking without approaching him about it.
I will admit, I am just a baseball mom with limited knowledge of the game. I am always learning, but the more I learn the more I realize there is to know!

quote:

Originally posted by Vance34:
Sluggo, Disagree. You'll find guys in the bigs who do it both ways. You'll even see guys do it in one at bat and not do it in the next at bat.

If your hitting the ball hard and consistently I'd bet your coach wouldn't even notice. So start hitting and it will take care of it self.

Well, his BA was 600 this summer, so that is why I am puzzled.

But how good was the pitching? You know it gets better as you get older.

Hitting is so much about adjustments, that if the hitter can do it both ways, or I should say, make last second adjustments in order to put the ball in play, he will have more long term success. If we teach situational adjustments, then we must allow the hitter to be flexible and adjust as he needs.

Coachric:

EXCELLENT POINT.

sluggo:

Let us discuss hititng a top of the knees outside corner pitch with two strikes. That pitch is difficult to hit with two hands on the bat. Even at contact. But to hit that pitch with consistent success, the hitter should practice htting the ball with both hands on right before contact and releasing the top hand so the forward arm directs the follow through. Otherwise, the top hand automatically brings the bat knob back into the body and simultaneously brings the bat barrel away from good contact with the pitch.

Now let us discuss a letter high inside corner pitch with two strikes. The "adjustment" here requires keeping two hands on the bat as long a possible because it is the top hand that brings the barrel in so the ball can be hit out in front of the plate and only then can the top hand release.

Of course, this does not even begin to consider all the situational adjustments of which Coachric is speaking. Bottom line for me is, have your son practice and see what pitches he may need to release his top hand and what ones he keeps it on longer. Ultimately it is he and not the coach that must live with your son's hitting mechanics.

TW344

quote:

Let us discuss hititng a top of the knees outside corner pitch with two strikes. That pitch is difficult to hit with two hands on the bat. Even at contact.

TW344,

Question....How far away from the plate would you be standing? Most HS/College guys are swinging 32" to 34" bats. With a 17" plate, and the bat handle is some distance away from your body as you swing, plate coverage should not be an issue. You would have to be an awfully long way off the plate not to be able to cover the outside corner.

I can see your point if you are talking about a pitch a full baseball or more off the plate (maybe the ump having giving it all game). I would think a pitch on the corner though you should be able to hit to RF without flailing away at it with one hand. You certainly should be able to get to contact on it with two hands.

NHFundamentalsDad:

With two strikes [which is the situation I described] I believe the hitter needs to be far enough away from the plate to make solid contact with an inside corner strike. How far away that sould be would depend on the batter and his practice sessions. The statement I made regarding the liklehood that it would be difficult to keep the top hand on the bat through the swing without losing the ability to make solid contact was based more on observation of hitters struggling to hit the outside pitch rather than any real statistical data on my part.

However, I, like you, am very interested in the math involved here. Let us take myself as an example. I am 5'10" [70 inches] tall. Let us take a 34" bat as our example since that is about as much an advantage as we can get. From my shoulder joint to my wrist is 23 inches for each arm. My fist is about 4.5 inches from fatty pad to thumb knuckle. My feet are about 10 inches long. As you say the plate is 17 inches wide. A baseball is about 3 inches in diameter. Have we forgotten anything in this equation? Probably so but lets go from here.

What is my maximum reach capability straight out from my shoulders while my two hands are gripping the bat? My reach only goes as far as my top hand allows which is 18.5 inches [23 inches minus the 4.5 inches my bottom hand takes up on the bat {assuming no knob issues and no choking up}]. We add the length of the bat and we get 52.5 inches. Now, we have to cover a 17 inch plate plus an additional 3 inches off the plate in order to hit a legitimate strike over the outside corner solidly with the bat barrel. So, if we stood up perfectly straight we could stand with the tips of our shoes as much as 22.5 inches [52.5 minus 20 inches for adequate plate coverage and 10 inches for my feet] away from the edge of the plate and still hit the letter high outside pitch.

But I was speaking of the low outside pitch. Here we get into math that is beyond my limited capabilities to accurately compute. But let us get as close as we can as simply as we can; again using myself as an example. Standing straight up and measuring from my underarm to the top of my knees I get 32 inches. We have a 17 inch plate. The Pythagorean Theorem is appplicable here. 32 squared + 17 squared = reach needed squared + 3 inches for solid hit on baseball. The answer I come up with is 39.3 inches [36.3 inches needed plus 3 for the strike barely in the zone]. 52.5 inch maximum reach minus 39.3 inches needed and 10 inches for my feet means my toes cannot be any further away from the plate than 3.2 inches. When you figure in a 32" bat it becomes 1.2 inches. And of course, I have to make bat contact with the ball right in the center of my body as it crosses the plate or I lose an inch or two in coverage if I am behind but expecially if I am ahead of the pitch in relation to the center of my body [because my top hand is my trailing hand and the more in front of the center fo my body I am with my swing, the less my maximum reach as long as my top hand is still on the bat].

Now we can talk about how no one hits standing standing straight up and bending the knees and leaning over with the upper body to hit an outside pitch is preferable to missing it, etc. but then there are those who insist that the front leg MUST be straight on contact so, I don't know how much the knee bend before contact actually helps in getting to the ball if at the last second the hitter pulls off of it. It certainly is much more complicated in the real situation than I have either dealt with here or can attempt to explain with more complicated math and your guess from this point forward is as good as mine but it will only be a guess. However, this should tell us something. I personally would find it very difficult to solidly hit a pitch on the inside corner of the plate when my toes were only 1.2 inches from the edge of the plate.

I hope this helps.

TW344

Sluggo, Sorry your question got off topic. I would not advise taking a hand off for outside pitches. Just hit the ball deeper in the hitting zone.

quote:

Originally posted by Vance34:
But how good was the pitching? You know it gets better as you get older.

The pitching was interesting. All players (who are chosen) play GG in our area at 14. So we saw everything from "BP" to "Elite" throwing low 80s. The better pitchers, for some reason, seemed much easier to hit off of than when facing them in USSSA Major Tournaments. I thought about it and I suspect that the difference is the pitches called by the coaches. Kind of off the subject, but interesting.

TW344,

lol....good use of the math....quite convoluted...but good

I was looking at it in a much more simplistic fashion. Most hitters are taught to hit the inside pitch out in front and pull it. The outside pitch we allow to get deeper into the plate and take the ball to right.

Without heading to the drawing board and calculator, i would guess that you missed sometihng in your numbers. I have watched many players hit HRs to right on pitches on the outside corner.

A very simple method to verify you can hit the pitch your talking about with out releasing the top hand before contact. Use a hitting tee and a place the ball such that it is just touching the black on the outside. You will find they don't have to set up that close to the plate to hit that pitch. I have done this many times with my son and other players I have worked with.

You can at the same time verify they can get the inside pitch by moving the tee to the inside corner, but placing it out in front of the plate.

MHFundamentalsDad:

Thanks for the cudos for my math. Not my best subject so I could have made a mistake but right now I don't know where. I certainly did make a big mistake when I wrote in my initial post that a hitter working on the low outside corner pitch should "practice hitting the ball with both hands on right BEFORE contact" and release the top hand. What I meant to say and certainly should have said was that the hitter should practice hitting with "both hands on right UP TO OR SLIGHTLY AFTER contact" and then release the top hand. So it is clear to any young hitters out there, I would never advocate trying to hit the ball with only one hand/arm on the bat at contact. What happens after contact we may disagree on but certainly not at contact.

As I aluded to in my second post, I believe bending the knees and adjusting the upper torso more over the plate as the hitter recognizes the low outside pitch will allow for the overall reach to be extended past my math calculation which, for simplicity sake, I had calculated with a batter [myself] standing straight up. Also an adjustment with the front foot striding more into the box or more towards the plate as the low outside pitch is recognized will increase the maximum effective reach and allow for better plate coverage. If these adjustments can almost automatically [i.e. without thinking]be made when appropriate, the hitter will not need to have his toes that close to the plate with two strikes in order to have complete plate coverage. But, again, and here I am agreeing with you, these adjustments are something that must be practiced over and over again until the hitter knows exactly how far away from the plate his toes can be to allow him to both turn on and pull the inside corner pitch by hitting it out in front of the plate [without fouling it every time] and likewise how close to the plate he must be in order to, as you say, "allow (the low outside corner pitch) to get deeper into the plate and take the ball to" the opposite field. It may be necessary that he also learn to bend his knees more, lean over the plate with his upper torso more or learn to rotate or swing through or other theory movememt that contemplates making bat to ball contact without straighting his front leg which I believe might cause him to pull off the ball in such a situation.

As a bit of [I hope] a relevant aside, my son and I went to the San Diego Azetic camp during the summer of 2005 and, though Tony Gwinn was not there the first 2 and 1/2 days of the three day camp, he was there for the final afternoon session. As his self-imposed penance for his tardiness, he agreed to answer any and all questions from this bunch of 16- 18 year old high schoolers on any baseball topic. When someone asked him about hitting the outside corner pitch he showed where the bat had to be in relationship to the front/back of home plate at the precise micro-second of contact and you would have thought these kids had never heard of this before. Of course, as you say and I have agreed, he demonstrated that to hit the inside pitch his bathead had to be out in front of the plate, the middle pitch at the front edge of the plate, and, of course, the low outside pitch at the back 1/3 of the plate [right at the point back of center of the body where the bottom arm could be fully extended]. After my son heard this from his favorite MLB Player, he finally agreed with me on how we work our 2 strikes practice hitting sessions and he hasn't looked back.

Anyway, I believe my bottom line here is to sucessfully do both [hit the high inside corner strike solid and the low outside corner strike solid] with two strikes you have to either set up to hit the inside pitch and make an adjustment in order to hit the outside pitch or vice versa. For me personally, it was alway easier to react outside and make the adjustment to take it opposite than it was to react inside and try to make an adjustment to catch up to the high inside fastball. But I do think, what the math shows in no uncertain terms is that an adjustment has to be made and that should be practiced by the reasonably prudent hitter.

TW344

Continuing a theme we have explored elsewhwhere, a successful application of this approach will free the good hitter from swinging at marginal pitches (i.e. non-strikes) earlier in the count.

Lots of good dialog in this thread. I like a lot of points from both main parties doing the talking. I also disagree with a couple, but again, this site is not to dispute hitting or coaching styles...simply to try and shed some light on areas of our favorite game. Great info guys!

To answer your question sluggo:
I think that a lot of coaches want to change every player they get in some fashion so they can put a "thumbprint" on them. Is this a good thing...in most cases no. I liked what Vance said about "if you are hitting, they won't worry about changing you". I tell my guys that all the time. You have to be "PC" unfortunately in today's world and agree with your coach at times where you may disagree, but choose your battles. If you can do a drill at practice (10 minutes or so) to apease your coach the way he wants it done and then go home that night and spend 30-45 minutes doing it how you are comfortable and how it works for you, you have done good on both ends. Good coaches don't try to make you change mechanics in a game, so if you go into a game and are consistent, he won't ever think you are doing anything different. Then he can accept responsibility for the "change" and everyone is again happy.

Make sense?

Like a hall of fame hitter told a young and future hall of fame hitter, "don't let anyone touch your swing."

My son's high school coach played pro ball. I told him he would not like my son's swing. He asked why. I told him in pro ball he hit 16% of his hits for extra bases, my son hits 45-50% for extra bases. My son has head movement, he did not. He spread his legs out, had dead hands and kept both hands on. My son does not. He did not change my son. However, he improved him. He let him do all the above but worked on unnecessary movement. Made him better.

I'll make a blanket statement. Any coach that will spend time making a good hitter hit with both hands on the bat throughout the swing is not a good coach.

At least 70% of good hitters have a top hand release, 70% of hitting coaches don't like it. I can do this math.

quote:

To answer your question sluggo:
I think that a lot of coaches want to change every player they get in some fashion so they can put a "thumbprint" on them. Is this a good thing...in most cases no. I liked what Vance said about "if you are hitting, they won't worry about changing you". I tell my guys that all the time. You have to be "PC" unfortunately in today's world and agree with your coach at times where you may disagree, but choose your battles. If you can do a drill at practice (10 minutes or so) to apease your coach the way he wants it done and then go home that night and spend 30-45 minutes doing it how you are comfortable and how it works for you, you have done good on both ends. Good coaches don't try to make you change mechanics in a game, so if you go into a game and are consistent, he won't ever think you are doing anything different. Then he can accept responsibility for the "change" and everyone is again happy.

Make sense?

Makes perfect sense. My son goes to the one of the top hitting instructors in our area and I have complete faith in him. We will deal with the HS coach "PC", but I am bummed about the whole thing.

I believe Charlie Lau Jr. is a big proponent of releasing one hand. He takes credit for Mark McGwire, ARod and many others HR production for this. He calls this important for lead arm extension.

Frankly, while I think lead arm extension is good, the one-hand release is a big load of bull. What you do after contact seems irrelevant to me and the name dropping is ridiculous.

However, I did try and think of reason why a one-handed release is good. The only thing I can think of is the batter never needs to worry about the wrists rolling over.

As for two-handed swings I think it helps promote a tight and short circular swing (great for inside pitches).

In videos I see players doing both but mostly 2 hands on inside pitches and 1 hand on outside pitches. So to me it just seems situational and the 1 or 2 handed thing is just a circumstance not something really worthwhile to coach one way or the other.