Dropping the Bat Head

Catch43, I inserted the still frames for you. Now let the discussion begin.

quote:

Now in this picture, doesn't the 3rd frame look like he is dropping his bat head and uppercutting the ball?

No.....

Catch43, when you say, "you are supposed to come down to the ball," are you saying swing down? What "vision" do you intend for us to get from the phrase? I have access from a very similar swing with Pujos but I need to ask permission to post it. I have other questions but that would muddy the waters of your intent of this post. (Tilt of the body? Tilt of the Shoulders? )

Taking the barrel of the bat straight to the ball is not what MLB hitters do....

The hitter is creating the arc......The arc must be created before it can be carried forward.......

For fun, I wanted to add this photograph as well:

Holliday is pronating his lead forearm and supinating his top hand. Imagine skipping rocks with the top hand and throwing a frisbee with the bottom hand.

Some hitters have a more pronounced arc than others. They actually get the barrel below the lead forearm. See clip below.

Hey, who made that clip of holliday?

What I mean is that it looks like the bat head is coming from under the ball which I was always told leads to popups. Apparently not.

What I'm seeing now is that as long as the hands stay just under the letters, its not really uppercutting. Can someone confirm that? The fat part of the bat is coming from under the ball, but I think the uppercutting problem stems from the hands dropping first. Does that make sense?

Think about it:
The baseball is traveling toward the batter at a downward plane, via gravity. If you take your swing and have your barrel come down on the ball, you minimize your chances of hitting the baseball. When it is below the ball, it is on the same plane. Holliday is not dropping his bat, that's just the proper plane the bat needs to be on to hit the ball solid.

If the ball is going down, and your swing is going down, you have very little space to hit the ball: it has to be perfect, and if it is off just a little bit, it's going to be a flare, or a ball hit straight into the ground.

If your swing is on the same plane, like MLB player's swings are, you can hit the ball in a much broader plane. They can therefore instead of lunging after the ball, keep their body back, and rotate, hitting the inside pitch out in front, and the outside pitch deep on the plate with pretty much the same swing. A downward swing would make that impossible.

I have a video of that holliday swing... I can't convert it though, so someone pm me and I'll email it to you to convert...

ok, for now, here it is on youtube...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fG_H-kXgjf0

catch-
the barrel of bat will always be below the hands, just as shoulders will always "dip"/"tilt" rearward, unless pitch is high across letters....

popups occur when a batter hits too low on the sphere (bottom third) just as grounders occur when batter hits too high on sphere (top third) no matter the swing plane/arc...

quote:

popups occur when a batter hits too low on the sphere (bottom third) just as grounders occur when batter hits too high on sphere (top third) no matter the swing plane/arc...

Diablo is correct here......

I will add....Squaring up the barrel of the bat on the ball consistently has to do with proper arm action.......