Hitting "flat footed"

Upstate,
What you have a problem with (from your description) is lack of "flow" in your swing mechanics. When you hit, your lower half works like you would if you were walking down the hall at school. As your front foot contacts the ground and the heel plants, the back heel should raise up and start to drive forward. This is not an explosive move, rather a subtle movement that will enable your hips to start in front of the hands and upper body. This is what will initiate the loading of the core muscles and helps to creat leverage as your approach the baseball. Once the ball enters the hitting zone, this movement becomes explosive and you finish with upper body and lower half finishing together.

Some drills you might try:

1) Walk throughs: Start behind the tee (in the batter's box) and walk forward towards the pitcher beginning with your front foot (left for RH and right for LH). You will take 3 steps. When you land with your front foot the second time, allow your front heel to plant and then check to see if your back foot "flowed" forward and raised up. If so, you will feel all your weight in the side of your big toe; hands above the back foot. Try it a couple of times without swinging and then use it with a swing to get the feel of your body's natural rhythm. Kind of hard to explain in words, but hopefully you get the picture.

2)Knee Pulls: Take a leg kick as if you were imitating Daryl Strawberry from 1986. As your lead leg comes down, you will swing and allow your back hip to kick forward driving your back kneecap into the net/wall in front of you. Repeat with a second leg kick/knee pull and then again. If you can successfully hit all 3 baseballs to CF and maintain your balance, you have good rhythm, balance, timing, and swing direction. All key to having a good swing, not to mention, it will force your back hip to turn and drive through the baseball.

Coach A, do you have any pics or videos of someone doing a walk through?

Great advice by Coach A! I would like to add my 2 cents. Improper footwork, as you describe, limits rotation and ultimately hinders bat speed. I tell my players that when they hit flat footed (incorrect footwork), it's like hitting sitting in a chair. Only the upper body works for you...the big muscles through the legs, butt, and torso are cut off by the incorrect footwork.
Think of footwork as a chain of events. Specifically, it's three events; 1. Heel plant (of stride foot), 2. Hips open, as long as 3. The back heel raises. From this position it is easy to "squish the bug" and finish correctly, with the back heel to the sky.
My favorite drill to help remedy the problem is "cheat foot". In the stance, cheat by moving the back foot around toward the pitcher approximately 20-25 degrees and raising the back heel off the ground (basically "squish the bug" by moving the toes from 12:00 to 10:00). Swing from here and feel how easy it is to finish correctly.

While your fixing the feet add some momentum transer. The walk up drill can be done like this with two steps

Rear foot steps behind batter toward tee. This sets the lead shoulder in and rear elbow back.

Now, front foot stride and momentum drives the body into the front leg.

No bug squish please. You will rotate around the rear hip....swing poison

You must drag the back toe to feel the back side release and get into the front side

Ortiz foot drag and others

http://imageevent.com/siggy/hitting/pro

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No bug squish please. You will rotate around the rear hip....swing poison

You must drag the back toe to feel the back side release and get into the front leg.
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Very good point. We don't teach "squish..." either. Tracking or dragging of the back foot is more conducive to proper swing mechanics due the the weight transfer helping to swing the bat forward.

The drill Ryno spoke of is a good one to use to get the feel of your hands and understand where your body should be near the finish of your swing.