Son's new stance

[APPpitch]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDHeMYpHHY4

My son Mike has been hitting well enough, but I started seeing too many pop ups, and too many RF only hits.

During a BP outing the other day, I tired of watching fly ball out after fly ball out. I mean they were pretty enough to look up at, but they were outs.

So my gut told me his hands were too high. So in the middle of this hour, I stopped and showed him how to start with his hands lower. I had old timer HOF's in my head. It was just instinct.

He complained that it felt weird and uncomfortable. I told him, "You're 15. Everything is weird and uncomfortable. Trust me."

About 20 swings in, we got the next succession of swings. I edited out some foul offs and several curveballs. The last 4-5 swings were actually some of the first ones. I was just a fan of the first swing. We then hit for another 30 minutes.

The sharp liners and deep gappers became the norm. He even hit curves solidly the other way.

So when I got home and loaded this stuff to my computer, I also visited the HOF website and watched old timers.

I was immediately drawn to Joe Dimaggio, Duke Snider & Ted Williams. Tall skinny guys, like Mike.

I know, we're not there yet. I also looked again at Barry Bonds.

What I kept seeing was that they all held the bat around the letters and had a downward motion first moments before the hips moved out and created separation.

Now, Mike has a few very noticeable problems. His stride gets too long and I don't think he fires the hips correctly and his front foot points down the 1B line too soon. But I love the path he is taking to the ball.

BTW, I throw BP from about 40 feet away and zing it in there pretty good. Meaning his reaction time has to be fairly quick. I also vary where I'm throwing and change speeds and toss curveballs to keep him honest. Yes, sometimes I accidently hit him. He is very uncomfortable with me pitching to him until I finally find my groove.

After further review of the HOF's above, tonight I taught him to drop his hands to his waist and bring his front knee inward at the same time so that his leg pretty much goes back to where it started at foot plant, like Bonds and Snider. You could immediately see fluidity, synchronization, and an ability to get to a stiff front knee lock very quickly.

Am I crazy to think that if I steal some traits from old time HOF for batting like I do for pitching that I may be on to something?

I mean why reinvent the wheel, right?

I must repeat that he has never hit the ball so consistently solid like this in 8 years of BP with me.

Could someone please temper my enthusiasm with some good technique pointers to help me get closer to the HOF's I mentioned above?

Thanks for your time.
-scott

[LAball]

He has hands leading the hips. I would work on hips leading the hands being the most important. The last few swings seems and a couple of the first ones has better hip action, but the middle ones dont seem to have any.

[Mark H]

http://imageevent.com/siggy/hitting/analysis;jsessionid=8fllcp2i01.lion_s

I don't see him creating the kind of angles and posture prior to rotation that I see in the clips at the above link so he can't look like those clips during rotation. His rotation doesn't look like theirs and neither does his arm action/connection. He does give the impression he's a good athlete but he's got a lot of work to do if he wants to have a good swing. You could start by studying everything you can find or link to on the above link.