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The Science of Hitting
Ted Williams, the former Boston Red Sox baseball hitting great, once said, "To be a good hitter, you must be quick with the bat and get a good pitch to hit". Our baseball hitting philosophy concurs and also advises: Look at the ball, develop a level shoulder-to-shoulder swing, rotate the hips and gain momentum to the pitcher.
When working with hitters, develop simple a simple hitting instruction routine that enables them to gain quickness with the bat and master the strike zone. The routine should give the hitters the chance to improve hand quickness through a number of mandatory repetitions and to work on eliminating any problems that slow the swing. The hitting instruction routine should also provide live hitting opportunities, so your hitters can master the strike zone and develop mission hitting.
In developing hitters, we believe in two types of hitting, batting practice and live hitting. Batting practice develops hitters through approximately 250 swings. This comes through heavy bat, tee drills, toss-and-hit drills and half-cage. Live hitting provides game experience through live hitting. For instance, hitters can be put into situations with counts such as 2-and-1 with a man on first, etc..
In developing good baseball hitting drills for team offense, look at the overall team concept and hitting abilities of each player. Know your projected batting order for the coming game. Know the overall strength and weaknesses of your team. If your team is loaded with great pitchers and has a strong defense but is weak in hitting, you�ll want to devise a system emphasizing �small ball� in order to get runs across. If you are fortunate to have a great hitting team, count your blessings. But you still need to develop a hitting scheme in any case.
Baseball Hitting Philosophy
Actions speak louder than words and this particularly true with baseball hitting instruction. It is easy for a coach to say, we are going to score runs by doing this or that. But if a team doesn�t prepare properly many of those base runners will never cross the plate. When developing your team offensive philosophy, keep things simple. Players have enough to worry about as the game develops. The easier your philosophy is for your players to understand, the easier it is to execute. A good, clear and simple rule to follow is mission hitting.
Baseball Mission Hitting
Every at-bat provides the hitter with a challenge and a mission. That mission may be to get on base, to move a runner or to drive in a runner. If no one is on base, the hitter must try to get on. If there is a runner on base, the hitter must find a way of advancing the runner to keep the inning going. If there is a runner in scoring position, the hitter must find a way to get the runner home or to at least extend the inning by getting on base so someone else can drive the runner home.
In practice, either live or wit a pitching machine, provide game situations that allow your hitters to become confident in mission hitting. The situations need to reflect the different strike-counts and other situations the hitter may face.
Mastering the Strike Zone
As a hitter, one of the toughest mental flaws to overcome is swinging at balls out of the strike zone or chasing pitches that are hard to drive. As a coach, you need to develop a routine that makes hitting good pitches automatic. One of the easiest ways to master the strike zone is through simulated game situations. Theses situations may be developed during the time allocated for either the hitters use of a pitching machine or in live pitching.
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The science of baseball hitting requires the discipline to extend in practice what the game entails when being played. Practice routines that are not extensions of the fundamentals of the game are pointless. Baseball hitting instruction demands consistency, imagination, repetition and above all, a love for the game.
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