One Drill That Guarantees the Correct Baseball Swing

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

One Drill That Guarantees the Correct Baseball Swing

By Jack Perconte

There are very few coaches of young baseball players who can look at a baseball swing and know it is a good fundamental swing. Even many high school coaches are not experienced enough to do this. There are some fine technical ingredients that are hard to notice by an untrained eye. The good news is that anyone can help a player with their swing with one drill.

One common saying that I tell hitters is, "It takes perfect fundamentals to hit an outside pitch solidly to the opposite field." For example, a right handed batter would be able to solidly hit a pitch on the outer half of the plate into right field. Hitters' hands and bat barrel position, as well as their timing must be perfect to continually drive this ball the other way. Many hitters hit pitches to the opposite field because of swinging late or because of incorrect fundamentals. However, in order to consistently hit a pitch "the other way" on a ball that is on the outside half of the plate, it takes a perfect fundamental swing. This is very important because the odds of hitting the outer half pitch solidly when it is pulled are not good. Pulling a ball is hitting a ball to the same side of the field as the side a hitter stands in the batter's box. Believe it or not, a ball that is fouled off to the opposite side of the field or straight back is often a better sign of a good fundamental swing than when this pitch is put in play to the pull side of the field. A foul ball is a positive on a tough pitch.

Coaches can get an indication of a good fundamental swing by noticing which direction players hit balls depending on the location of pitches. Players should work on the correct baseball swing by working on driving outside pitches to the opposite field with the following drill.

Drill

Very simply, set a batting tee on the outer half of home plate making sure the batter stands in their normal position at the plate, as in a game. Have hitters work on hitting line drives the opposite way until they can do it repeatedly and until it becomes very natural. A continuation of this drill would be to do the same thing with balls flipped by a coach to this part of the plate and following that with batting practice on outer half pitches.

As mentioned, it takes great fundamentals to consistently do this on this pitch. Hitters will find that as they become more consistent with this pitch, their swing will be correct on all pitch locations.

This drill is also another way of analyzing a player's swing to see if it is a good fundamental swing, especially for people who don't have a trained hitting instructors "eye." Players, who cannot consistently drive this pitch to the opposite field (8 or 9 out of 10 times), need improved baseball swing fundamentals. Additionally, because of the use of aluminum bats and their fear of hitting batters, pitchers throw more pitches "away" from hitters so becoming better at hitting outside pitches can only help hitters' batting averages.

Former major league baseball player, Jack Perconte gives baseball hitting tips and batting practice advice for ballplayers of all ages. His baseball hitting lessons advice can be found at http://www.baseballhittinglessons.com/baseball
Jack is the author of two books, The Making of a Hitter and Raising an Athlete - his parenting blog can be found at http://positiveparentinginsports.com

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