Expert: John Priest - 11/10/2008

Question
I see you answered one fathers question abouting hitting.  My son took lessons from a batting coach who preached a slight upper cut swing.  I read your answer to one father stating this to be true.  The coach we took lessons from also taught rotational hitting.  My problem is that there are meaning coaches who disagree about this style of hitting, say swing down on the ball, your dropping your back shoulder, that's incorrect swing stay on top of the ball. Which means to me drive the ball into the dirt. My son has alot of power and is persistant with starting his hips first, letting his bat lag behind to get the bat speed needed to hit the ball.  But with these different coaches saying you need to swing more down on the ball makes it very confusing.  It causes me alot of problems, because I believe in this coach which teaches rotational type of hitting with a slight upper cut.  He even explained the reasoning why to hit slightly up on the ball to get top spin if it's a ground ball to make it travel faster and if it's a line drive it will have back spin.  One of the problems I see when he swings, he appears to be on the pitch plain of the ball, but he swings slightly over the ball. Can you tell me what might help with that.  Also can you reconfirm that it's okay to have a slight upper cut on the ball. Because when he does strike out, these coaches start blamming his swing by saying your not swing down on the ball.  My son is 10 years old and some of the coaches have been pertty harsh about it during the games and it has caused his confidence of hitting to decrease.  Thank you John Key

Answer
John,
    You will see that every coach has their own view of how to hit a baseball and if you don't hit their way they will give you 100's of reasons why you should.  The head down swing down type of swing in known as the linear swing.  I see this type of swing a lot in Little League.  It is a contact swing that is very basic and easy to teach.  When I see this type of swing at the high school levels I see weak hitters not at their full potential.  
    If your son is swinging over the ball he may be rolling his wrists rather than flipping his wrists.  This sometimes is a problem when hitters hit the same side they throw (Righthand hitters and righthand throwers).  This makes for the top hand to be the dominant hand.  This may be the case with your son.  If the top hand is dominant it may be likely that this hand takes the swing over which will cause the roll.  The top hand should be the control hand and the bottom hand should be the power hand.   Doing one hand drills with a half bat will train your son's bottom hand to be more dominant if this is his problem.  Rolling your wrists will make the barrel of the bat to come up and over the top of the baseball.  The hands should stay flat through the contact zone and not roll if this happens the wrists will flip as you come into the follow through.  The roll starts early in the contact zone while the flip happens quicker and after contact making sure you come up and through the baseball.
    Don't worry about the slight upper cut or which way the ball spins.  With the spin you don't want top spin.  Top spin is like a curve ball and curve balls go down.  If you hit a ball with this spin gravity will pull it down along with its rotation.  You do want a very slight upper cut swing.  It is better explained as coming up and through the baseball.  Focus less on the slight upper cut aspect of the swing and more on letting the hips start the swing and the hands following.  If everything is done correctly up to the release of the hands from the rotation you will be on the correct path and go up and through the baseball.  Focusing too much on the slight uppercut may make the uppercut too big.  
     For the coaches who blame this when he strikes out, what do they blame when other players strike out.  When a player strikes out it is usually 99% because of bad timing.  Bad timing creates bad swings.  You can also get pictures on the Internet of MLB players doing the rotational swing.  If you see them at or just before contact you will see the back shoulder is slightly under the front and the swing up up and through the baseball.  If these coaches got a good explanation of the rotational swing they would change their tune.  Every coach that I have spoken to have changes completely to the rotational style.
    If their is anything else I can do to help let me know.  You can also give them my e-mail address if you want or have them ask me questions through this web site.  My e-mail is John_Priest2@msn.com.

Thank You,
John Priest