I read with great interest Eli’s column last week about his entry into the coaching ranks. Why so interested? Other than that he’s coaching my son’s baseball team, I’m along for the ride when I can help. It’s been awhile since I coached 7th grade baseball, but I quickly found the basic ideas I taught for so many years came back quite naturally.
I’m very much an old school baseball guy. I was raised to believe baseball is the greatest sport there is and that it deserves to be treated with respect in every regard. The first time I threw my bat and helmet was also the last time I did so. Make a mistake? How could I change that the next time the play occurred? Tip my hat when the other team makes a great play – absolutely.
I’ve gone to coaching clinics over the years, the most recent being a year ago. There are always tidbits you pick up at these, little things that can make a difference in how you run practice or how you can help a young man get better at a crucial part of the game with which he’s struggling. Last year, I spent a lot of time absorbing knowledge about adjusting batting stances and swings. Not everybody is going to swing exactly the same, nor should they, but there are a few basic tendancies that should be followed.
The keys to batting, as I’ve learned over the years, are focused on your wrists and feet. The biggest mistakes young batters make are related to those two body parts. The feet and the balance they provide help a batter time the swing as the ball approaches. The big leg kick you sometimes see from major league players? Eh, it can work, but the step with the front foot is more of a timing mechanism to land and drive some force into the bat hitting the ball. The back foot should pivot as you swing to end up facing the pitcher.
But try to stride too far or remove the balance from your back foot, and you’ll likely flail helplessly at the ball. Sure, you might make contact, but the ball won’t go very far. That balance that remains from before to after the front-foot stride is integral to batting with success.
The wrists are an issue I recall having as a young player. Everyone wants to bash the ball and hit home runs. So batters will extend their arms first, attempting to use all their strength to drive the ball a long way. However, the best batters are strong in the wrists and quick with the bat because of it. They can turn on an inside pitch and still hit with power. The wrists should lead the way instead of the forearms. You might occasionally have to extend to reach the outside corner, but most of the time, that will cut off the inside half of the plate, causing you to overswing on any pitch in that region.
But wait, things are changing in the big leagues. More and more, you hear about launch angles and hitting the ball in the air. This goes against everything we used to believe, where we were taught to drive the ball on a line or to hit it on the ground for the best success. To me it’s a strange concept, but it’s a different take on how to hit a baseball.
Last year in MLB, there were a record number of home runs hit. There were also a record number of strikeouts. Players are willing to sacrifice batting average for power totals, usually measured by slugging percentage. I’ve been startled by this turn of events. I like the idea of get on base, move runners around, score when the opportunity presents itself. Relying on home runs to win games is foreign to my old-time idea of baseball.
I like seeing home runs as much as the next guy, but watching a guy swing for the fences on an 0-2 count makes me cringe. I still teach to choke up on the bat in that situation and just try to make contact, hoping for something good to happen. Putting the ball in play will always give you a better chance of reaching base than striking out. But that doesn’t get you a big contract.
Watching these uppercut swings might go against what I believe as a baseball coach, but, at least in MLB, they’re producing results. When more runs are scored per game, fans tend to be happy. I’d just as soon see a 1-0 or 3-2 game that is well played and has crucial hits at key times, but watching last year’s World Series between the Dodgers and Astros and the bashing that went on was pretty exciting. Players were swinging for the fences, trying to be heroes in every at-bat, and succeeding at a ridiculous pace.
Does that mean Eli and I will teach kids the uppercut swing? Nah, that’s not really for teenagers. They need to learn contact first and how to use their feet and wrists to drive the baseball. Maybe, if they’re good enough, somebody in a minor league facility can help them change over to a different sort of swing that will earn them millions of dollars. Until then, the basics will stay the same and the bat angle will produce singles and doubles, but not many home runs. As it should be in 7th grade.
Word of the Week: This week’s word is philistine, which means one who is smugly insensitive to certain values, as in, “The philistine dared to tell young kids that striking out was okay as long as when you made contact, you hit the ball a long way in the air.” Impress your friends and confuse your enemies!