Hitting Question

It sounds like your son has a pretty good approach at the plate.  IMO, i would encourage him to stay the course.  As the "go yard" guys move up in HS ball, they will face better, smarter pitchers and they won't be "going yard" quite so often, if at all unless they are truly a masher.  The "gap to gap" guys are ones that will remain consistent and reliable and coaches really like that.

Two of my son's SR classmates that are still trying to find a place to play next year just came back from a work-out at an NAIA school....we had one of them pass on his experience at the work-out to our younger guys at our summer squad practice...his advice was this was:  the schools HC said, if you can't hit oppo, or execute in situational hitting, you won't play here!

Stay the course, it will pay off in the long run

To me success is squaring the ball up as often as possible... and hitting the ball where it is pitched...

You can't hit a pitch on the inside corner to RC with much authority; nor can you pull an outside corner pitch thru the left side very well

Just use the whole field and drive the ball consistently... hitting an HR or two as a freshman is not a mantra for future success

Some very very good hitters might not get one out until their junior or senior year

I agree with pitchout31-- focus on getting the sweet spot on the ball and let the ball go where it may.  Deliberately focusing on not hitting a ball down the line is, to me, not helpful.  If you barrel the ball up consistently then you'll tend to work alley to alley for the most part, but I don't see any reason to avoid those doubles and triples to the corners. 

As for HR power -- your son's a freshman.  As time goes on, who hits HR's will be determined more by who squares the ball up consistently than by who is big and strong.  This gets more and more difficult for guys who hit in the middle of the order because they will see more off-speed stuff and pitchers will try to work them out of the zone more.  So it's actually not unusual to see a strong kid who's not all that much of a hitter, maybe batting 8th in the order, pull a tater now and then on a grooved fastball -- a pitch the kid batting 3rd won't get to see very often.

Focus not just on the swing mechanics but on having a mental approach that works on having a tough AB every time up.  That kind of kid leads the team in line outs-- but also often in batting average, HR's and just about every other category.

Agree with above posters.  My only question is... what the heck kind of field are you playing on where several freshman are going yard?

I'm curious too. In our competitive so cal league the most any one payer hit was 3 the entire season on 300-350 foot fields. None by Freshman.

My 2017 son finished his HS season with the highest BA and power numbers. Several standup doubles and lots and lots of hard line drives up the middle and to left-center. He bats lefty. He was a bit concerned that he had few pull hits (but a few roll-over grounders) to the right side. His batting coach asked me "His dilemma is not pulling balls when he is hitting line drives up the middle? Tell him that since he is probably mostly seeing outside pitches, he's doing fine." As for power, I think focusing on hitting the ball hard and pitching and jumping on good pitches makes far more sense at his age.

Clarification:

Other freshmen boys across several states by way of his travel/showcase cronies.  NO, these are not all kids on one HS team!!  That would be impressive!  He knows maybe 4 freshmen boys all on different HS teams who have hit their 1st HRs as freshmen.  No multiples I know of. 

All great replies.  Thanks for the responses.  Love talking baseball.  Can't wait for the summer season to kick in!

I had a similar player with doubles power, low strikeouts, line drives all over all the time and his particular strength was going deep in counts and hitting with 2 strikes when compared to his peers.

When the hitting philosophy of "turning on the ball" and "first ball fastball" became part of the equation his entire approach changed.  Not surprisingly the results were not as good.  What impressed the coach in the first place was his ability to take the outside pitch and plug the left field gap with a bullet.  When it was over that had disappeared in exchange for a bunch of 4-3 and 3 unassisted wrapping around the outside pitch.  Line drives all but disappeared and everything was on the ground or a fly ball/pop up.  He never did hit a HR and lost about 100 points on his batting average and 150 on his OBP because the walks disappeared as well.

Unless you think your son is going to develop into a plus power hitter forget home runs.  They will come with consistent hard contact.

Ahhh, that makes more sense.

While I agree with everyone that he should not change his approach, I will add that he should have the ability to turn on a ball as part of his arsenal.  With our HS players, we do a lot of front toss drills hitting oppo.  With most tosses thrown outer half, we will occasionally mix one inside, making sure they can recognize and adjust, turning on those.

He should stay with his current approach but be able to see and react on the inner half. IMO, that is what pulling the baseball with authority is all about - seeing it and reacting to it.  He can work on this during BP.  Try a focused round (or half round) of front toss on the inner half to work on recognition and getting the barrel.  I would follow that with a similar round of all outer half.