Weak hitters tend to have a lot of unnecessary body movement on non-swinging pitches. For example, a hitter that has that exaggerated lean on every outside pitch is almost without exception, a weak hitter.
You can watch a player take one pitch and often tell if they are a decent hitter and even more often recognize that they are a weak hitter. Except for pitches that a player needs to get out of the way of, the best hitters are generally the players that take every non-swinging pitch with the least movement and are very consistent.
A lot of this has to do with mechanics as well as early pitch recognition. I think coaches would be well served by instructing their players how to take pitches and to tell them if they over exaggerate every bad pitch, it’s a pretty good indicator that their mechanics are broke.
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