I don't get time enough to work with our players to do complete overhauls of their swings but there are a few obvious things I'd like to fix. I'd love to get some thoughts from the group here on drills/cues/??? I could use to work out some of these obvious kinks. Here goes...
Player 1
Kid is naturally pigeon toed and his front side is really closed off. He never gets his hips through...best case, they're facing right/center gap. Perhaps because he doesn't use his hips to generate his power, he lunges/dives really hard at every pitch. His head moves about 18 inches forward and about 7-8 inches down as he takes a big stride forward.
Player 2
This one starts with the bat at a pretty flat angle over his deltoid at load position. As he strides forward, he 'squats' for lack of a batter term (perhaps I could say he 'sits' a bit), and at the same time drops his bat behind him to a completely horizontal position kind of behind his rear bicep. The lower the pitch, the more he drops his body and the bat. I need to get him to a more vertical bat position, out in front.
Player 3
Pretty athletic kid...his first move with the hands is straight back toward the backstop, really barring the front arm, pushing the hands away. In this position, he also has the bat wrapped around the back of his neck, with the middle of the barrel actually touching the back of his neck. Of course he drags the knob and the rest of his $400 bat through the zone all the way.
Player 4
Last kid is an athletic LH player who is really pull happy. Rips inside pitches down the line or foul, and gets out around pitches on the outer half and hooks them to RF. He hits them pretty hard sometimes, but a lot of ground outs to 2B. Is it ok to still use the term 'stay inside the ball'? Might get killed for that one.
Thanks for whatever thoughts or quick fixes you might provide.
Happy New Year!
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