The Simplicity of Efficient Swing Mechanics

DR. T. BOBROWSKI

THE SIMPLICITY OF AN EFFICIENT SWING

A discussion for coaches about a biomechanically efficient swing using talking points provided by a Sports Illustrated article in which Chris Davis explains how he increased his consistency and power by unlearning much of the hitting instruction he received, and returning to how he swings naturally.

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Introduction Have you ever wondered why some players can hit the ball harder, or farther, than others? And why some can do it more consistently? Most of us have, and I suspect by now the common belief is that the answer must be some mixture of a player’s physical attributes (height, weight, strength, flexibility, etc.) and skill level (technique, mechanics, etc.). Many studies in multiple scientific fields including the areas of genetics, physiology and biomechanics have, in fact, confirmed that to be the case.

In 2014, the median height of a Major League Baseball (MLB) player was just over 6’ 1” tall. The median weight was slightly less than 210 pounds. And yet many smaller players such as Jose Altuve (5’ 6”, 7 HRs, 0.453 SLG) in 2014, Dustin Pedroia (5’8”, 9 HRs, 0.415 SLG) in 2013, and Jimmy Rollins (5’ 8”, 23 HRs, 0.427 SLG) in 2012 hit the ball harder than their average counterparts, as evidenced by their above average SLG% (MLB median 0.413). How can this be?

The answer is biomechanical efficiency. To put it simply, biomechanical efficiency, as it relates to the baseball swing, means generating the energy needed for the swing, and then transferring that energy with as little waste as possible through the body and into the baseball at contact. By doing those two things a player will hit the ball as hard as he is genetically able, and will be able to do it consistently.

Every player has genetic limitations, however. Some will never be as big, fast or strong as other players. Assuming each swing is biomechanically efficient, a player with less genetic ability cannot hit the ball harder than one with more. It is physically impossible. Using the SLG% example once more, here are the top ten sluggers from the 2014 MLB season, including their height and weight. Only two are smaller than the Major League average: 1. Jose Abreau - 0.581 - 6’ 3” - 255 lbs 2. Victor Martinez - 0.565 - 6’ 2” – 210 lbs 3. Mike Trout - 0.561 - 6’ 2” – 235 lbs 4. Giancarlo Stanton - 0.555 - 6’ 6” – 240 lbs 5. Edwin Encarnacion - 0.547 - 6’ 1” – 230 lbs 6. Andrew McCutchen - 0.542 - 5’ 10” – 190 lbs 7. Anthony Rizzo 6’ 3” – 240 lbs 8. Nelson Cruz - 0.525 - 6’ 2” – 230 lbs 9. Jose Bautista – 0.524 – 6’ 0” – 205 lbs 10. Miguel Cabrera – 0.524 – 6’ 4” – 240 lbs But size isn’t everything, as we demonstrated before. How do McCutchen and Bautista hit the ball harder than all but a few larger players? It’s simple. Their swings are more biomechanically efficient. Does that mean that Cabrera, who is 6 inches taller and 50 lbs heavier than McCutchen could hit the ball harder more often if he would improve the efficiency in his swing?

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It absolutely does!

So what matters, then, is maximizing each player’s genetic potential…to allow them to become all they can genetically become. And the only way to accomplish that is by moving efficiently.

The purpose of this paper is to use the examples in the following article to highlight the major aspects of an efficient swing. The topics I will discuss include: 1. How the best hitters generate energy for their swing, 2. In what sequence that energy needs to be exchanged between body segments to remain efficient, 3. How a stable posture promotes the efficient exchange of energy, 4. Why posture influences bat path, ball flight, and the quality of hit, 5. Why contact point is vitally important to maximizing efficiency, 6. Why most hitting instruction, at all levels, actually hinders player development, 7. What you can do to help your players reach their genetic potential.

As you read the article you will see areas that are underlined or bracketed with a large gray number nearby. Those are the talking points I will expand upon in the discussion section following the article. They are numbered to make referencing the information easier.

I am sure what you read will contradict some, or even many, of the things you currently teach your players. That’s okay. How could you know until you were given the information?

Remember, at one point not that long ago, we also believed the earth was flat! That is until science proved otherwise.

Well, it is the same with hitting instruction. Conventional wisdom has prevailed through the ages until recent advances in 3D motion analysis, dynamic biomechanical force measurement, and new genetic discovery have led to a trove of new information. We can now arm ourselves, and our players, with this knowledge and truly help them become the best of themselves.

This information is not opinion. It is just fact…a summary of biomechanical studies performed with ultra-high-speed cameras, force plates, and three-dimensional computer analysis. Unlike traditional video analysis, which is two-dimensional with frame rates from 30-60 frames/sec., the computer has the ability to measure everything a hitter does in all three dimensions. I hope I present the information in a way that is easy to understand and that you will begin to integrate it into your teaching.

Instruction is telling someone how to do something. Teaching is explaining why.

I hope after reading this paper that you begin to instruct less and teach more.

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“The Oriole’s Chris Davis Makes His Case For Maris’s Mark” Sports Illustrated August 26, 2013 Written by: Tom Verducci

Discussion 1. “The baseball swing is a kinetic chain.” What does these mean? First, it is a biomechanical term.

Sports biomechanics is a quantitative based study and analysis of professional athletes and sports' activities in general. It can simply be described as the “physics of sports”. In this subfield of biomechanics the laws of mechanics are applied in order to gain a greater understanding of athletic performance through mathematical modeling, computer simulation and measurement.

Biomechanics is the study of the structure and function of biological systems by means of the methods of “mechanics” – which is the branch of physics involving analysis of the actions of forces.

The people who do this work are called biomechanists.

The concept of the kinetic chain originated in 1875 and was applied to human movement in 1955 by Dr. Arthur Steindler. He defined it as a "combination of several successively arranged joints constituting a complex motor unit."

In lay terms, this essentially means that the chain is a series of movements. The body is viewed as a series of segments. A movement originates in one segment, passes through a joint that connects the next segment, and continues to move in this fashion, segment-joint-segment-joint-etc. until it reaches an end (i.e. fingertip).

In baseball, the kinetic chain originates in the feet with movement being directed upward through the body segments until it reaches the hand. In other words, everything moves from the ground-up.

2. The biggest problem with hitting instruction today at all levels…including the MLB level…is that very few instructors actually know what a “good” swing is! Is it one that makes contact? Maybe even solid contact? One that produces line drives? One that is “short” or “compact” or one of the many other expressions referring to how long a swing looks? How about a “strong” swing? Or one with good “angles”? Is a good swing one that is “level” or one that stays “on plane”? How about one with “quick hands?” Perhaps it is all of those things. Perhaps none.

Every hitting instructor has his own belief about what attributes a swing should have. And then he sets out to make his pupils emulate his beliefs. He creates what some in the scouting community call

12 a “manufactured swing.” It is a swing that is full of instruction but lacking athleticism. “First do this, and then do this, then this, etc.” Or “start in the position, and then get to this position, then this one, etc.”

It is one that is not natural for that particular hitter, and therefore, actually suppresses the hitter’s natural movements from dominating the swing. His robotic movements, learned from hours of instruction, can never flow efficiently from segment to segment no matter how quickly they are performed in succession. There will be energy losses among and between each body segment, resulting in an overall energy deficit at contact. It’s the very definition of inefficiency.

The truth is that a “good” swing is one that is efficient, and natural. It is one that produces energy, and transfers that energy from the ground upward into the baseball so that the ball leaves the bat with maximum velocity. And because it is efficient it is also extremely consistent. Not only does it provide maximum bat speed but it also ensures bat quickness, allowing the hitter to track the ball longer before committing to the pitch. And it puts the barrel on plane with the pitch early in the swing, keeping it on plane through contact.

3. This point is really just an extension of the previous point. Since they don’t know the key aspects of an efficient swing, the vast majority of players, coaches (and, unfortunately, all the TV announcers and analysts influencing players and coaches with their ignorance) at all levels also do not know the things that are important in a swing and those that are not.

Josh Donaldson was very blunt on the Jim Rome radio show in May, 2015 when Rome asked him about today’s hitting instruction. Donaldson responded “I would say 98% of people who talk about hitting talk about the wrong things. They don’t teach about the swing process. They teach their cues.

They teach you “swing down”, they say “get on top of the ball”, “stay through the ball”. But they don’t teach you how. They don’t know how to create a rubber band effect from your torso to your legs. They don’t understand how to do that.”

He then explains that he transformed himself from a poor MLB hitter to what he is today through his own research since the instruction he had received to that point…even at the professional level…was not what he needed. He was initially called up to the majors in 2010 and hit only 0.156.

He was sent back to the minors for a year and a half where he went to work analyzing the swings of players from Ted Williams to Miguel Cabrera. He improved his swing, was called back up in 2012 and is now a Major League All Star.

When asked what he learned from all that film study, Donaldson responded, “I think the most important thing is that you have to know how your body moves in space, to have body awareness to be able to make adjustments.”

Hitting instruction has relied on conventional wisdom since its inception. If something is said by someone in a position of respect or authority in the game, it then becomes repeated enough over time that it is eventually assumed to be true.

Until the advent of video tape in the 1970s, players and coaches had only their eyes to tell them what they think they saw. But the swing has two phases…a slow phase and a fast phase. Using the eyes to accumulate data during the slow phase isn’t too bad. But when the fast part of the swing

13 occurs, which takes about 0.15 seconds…literally the average blink of an eye…there is no way that the eyes are of much value as an assessment tool.

Of course, with the development of video and many other tools we now know that some things that were once thought to be true simply are incorrect. They just do not happen in a good swing. And yet that information is still being perpetuated…like the Ranger’s instructors assuming that because of Davis’s head movement he could not track the ball as well. Head movement is just one of the many hitting myths that have been dispelled now. More on myths and mechanics in talking point #5.

4. A swing that is natural, however, will produce results because it will be much more efficient.

Remember, efficiency is all about generating energy and transferring it as completely as possible into the baseball to produce maximal force at impact.

A player’s most biomechanically efficient swing was most likely the one he had when he was a child…before receiving any instruction. Why? Because we are all genetically wired to produce movements based upon the goal we are trying to achieve. The “software” comes preloaded.

There is a principle in the field of biomechanics called the “Bernstein Principle.” It states that “a body will organize itself according to the ultimate goal of the activity.” How true.

When you “learned” to walk you did so without instruction. Your parent put you at arm’s length, let go, and said something like “walk to me” or “come here son.” And after a few attempts, you did it.

They did not tell you to start with both knees bent, feet about shoulder width apart, toes pointed at 30 degrees, step with the right, swing the left arm backward slightly and so on. All they did was give you the goal. Your body organized itself to accomplish the goal.

In camps we provide, I present this point by asking a camper to hold a Frisbee. Then I ask him to try to hit a bucket that’s about ten feet in front of him. Invariably, the camper will hold the Frisbee in front of him, throwing arm partially extended, weight almost entirely on the front foot (as if trying to get as close to the bucket as possible), and will flick his wrist with an almost motionless body to guide the Frisbee to the bucket. Then I will ask him to throw the Frisbee as far as he can. His mechanics will completely change. He will draw his arm backward, wrapping the Frisbee around his waist, he will coil his body slightly, take a long step forward, uncoil his hips, then his shoulders, then his hand will extend forward as he lets go of the Frisbee.

I then ask the rest of the camp if they noticed the difference in his mechanics, and how I did not instruct him how to accomplish either goal. He just knew how to do it, and his body organized itself to achieve the goal. To drive the point home, I then proceed to ask if he had attended a Frisbee camp to learn those techniques. The campers laugh, but the points are made.

In baseball terms, if your goal is to make contact your mechanics will be different than if your goal is to hit the ball hard. And you don’t need to be instructed how to do either one.

5. Mechanics. It is a word that I am apprehensive to use when discussing a swing. It conjures up pictures of a player getting to a position, moving to another, then to another, etc. It implies instruction. And while there obviously needs to be some instruction involved with player development, I believe, as I mentioned before, that teaching needs to be first. And the first teaching point about mechanics is that if the player has been blessed with any athletic ability at all, he

14 already knows the most efficient way for his body to swing a bat. It’s your job to help him uncover it, since it has probably been coated with layers of instruction.

I spent some time discussing hitting with coaches of the Oregon State staff when we worked camps together. They said that throughout the four years they spend with their players, the majority of that time is spent stripping away the instruction they’ve received before arriving at Oregon State.

It just so happens that Coach Casey is on the research committee of a company that provides highspeed, computerized 3D motion analysis of hitters and pitchers. Do you think there’s a connection between the quality of the information Coach Casey has access to and the quality of the product Oregon State puts on the field every season? Actually, that’s rhetorical. Of course there is!

There is so much conventional wisdom and misinformation out there that it pervades every level of the game. This section will likely contradict a lot of it. These are a few of the common hitting concepts that hinder development and will be addressed in this section:        

Keep weight back (stay back)…actually should be nearly 100% weight shift to front leg Keep the head still…the head moves forward and downward until front heel plant Back elbow up…upper torso should be relaxed, elbow angle irrelevant Anything about the hands…hands do very little on their own (along for the ride) Swing down to the ball…best hitters put barrel on plane early and barrel stays below the ball A “short” swing is best…length doesn’t matter, only quickness Get front foot down early…not before ball is 2/3 of the way to the plate Contact point “out front”…the deeper the contact the faster the barrel is moving

So let’s get started. The first thing to know about efficient mechanics is that everything in baseball, including hitting, works from the ground up. And the first concept about efficient hitting is that the hitter needs to generate the energy he will use in his swing.

LINEAR MOVEMENT The energy has to come from somewhere, preferably from an external source so it can be added to the energy the hitter will create on his own. The energy of interest is momentum. An easy way to generate momentum is by pushing against the ground. And since the ground is the only thing baseball players can push against, unlike other sports that allow a player to push against other players (i.e. football, basketball, etc.), that is what they use. It is called linear momentum.

Linear momentum involves moving the entire body, front foot, hips, shoulders and head forward in the direction of the pitcher. Ideally, the hitter starts from a balanced position (head over center of gravity (CG) and about midway between the feet to achieve a 50/50 weight distribution), strides, and once the front heel contacts the ground, he should be returned to a balanced position. In our camps we use the phrase “stride to balance.”

The next page shows Albert Pujols creating linear momentum while maintaining dynamic balance:

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In this photo, Pujols has slightly more weight on his back leg to begin with, but as he moves forward that weight is redistributed to the front leg and he lands very balanced. Also notice how his entire body moves forward, not just his front foot. It’s the only way a player can land balanced (head over CG, between feet).

There are many ways hitters “stride” and no one way is “better” than another. It is up to the hitter.

However, it has been proven that more energy will be generated the longer the stride, or the higher the leg lift. Again, every player is genetically unique. Some abdominal muscles are more explosive than others, levers are different lengths, body weight is different, etc. Some players can hit the ball as hard as others with less linear movement. Some cannot. But I can tell you that if a player wants to generate energy and the hit the ball harder, then he needs to “get linear”…even if it’s just a little.

Some players use a “traditional” stride. Some are big “leg kickers”, some are what I call “high heel” guys, and some are “toe touch” guys. And there are hybrids of all these types. Whatever feels comfortable to them and gets them to a balanced posture at front heel plant is acceptable. The key is to watch their head. If it’s not moving forward with their body, they will land in an unbalanced posture, causing most of their weight to be shifted backward, and their posture to be inverted (slanted backward from head to CG). This causes energy to be directed away from the ball and changes barrel plane dramatically.

SLOW AND EARLY Momentum takes time to develop. So it is imperative that the hitter start whatever his movement is early enough in the pitcher’s delivery that he doesn’t have to hurry any of his movements. One of the most common problems with amateur swings is that the hitter tends to start his linear movement late, causing him to “thrust” his front foot into the ground and prematurely rotate his shoulders in an attempt to get the barrel to the ball.

A swing that is efficient is one that allows the energy to flow uninterrupted up the kinetic chain. Good hitters do not start, stop and restart their swings, even if they are mistimed. A hitter should have one speed and rhythm. Everything the hitter does should be consistent. Synching his movements with each pitchers delivery, a good hitter only changes when he starts his linear move, never the speed with which he moves.

16 Look at these examples below of some good MLB hitters. The pitcher in each photo has yet to release the ball and already the hitter has begun his linear movement. This allows him to “rhythm the pitcher” much more easily.

Interestingly, Jose Bautista talked about this very topic during an ESPN interview in 2010. Check it out here: https://youtu.be/z0AlTsey6MI. He was a part-time player for five major league teams at the start of his career never hitting more than 16 HRs in a season. Finally, when he landed in Toronto, he learned the advantage of starting slow and early. It was the only change he made. The next year he hit 54 HRs, and has averaged 33 a year since.

FRONT SIDE BLOCKING The best hitters, then, begin to transfer that linear energy upward through the body, converting it into rotational energy. When the front heel plants all linear movement stops and the momentum that was generated is transferred upward in the form of rotation. Biomechanists sometimes call this a “front side block” and it’s important to understand.

Imagine putting a cup of coffee on top of your car as you unlock the door, then get inside and forget about the coffee. You barely press the gas pedal and suddenly remember the coffee! You hit the brake out of reflex, the car stops immediately, but the coffee continues forward at the same speed that the car was moving and flies over the hood. That is front side blocking.

The hitter is the car and his back hip is the coffee. He starts to gain some forward momentum (with his stride), and when the front heel plants into the ground the body stops moving forward immediately. But since the body is hinged, the only thing that stopped was the front side of the body. The back side continues forward, including the back hip and leg.

That’s why it is counterproductive to instruct a player to drive his back knee forward. If he generates any linear momentum to begin with, and has an efficient front side block, the back side will fly forward on its own without spending any energy to make it happen. If the player does not have a good front side block (i.e. hips continue to “slide” forward, or torso continues forward, etc.) then a significant amount of the energy that was generated by the linear movement will be lost.

17 Some players appear to have a good front side block, but actually just do not transfer energy into the front leg. These players actually leave their back foot anchored in the ground. It will move forward only slightly, almost appearing to be “dragged” forward on its inner edge.

An efficient front side block is easy to see. When the heel plants into the ground, the front hip will begin to turn backward, the back hip forward, the back foot will turn over and the back knee will continue forward on its own and form a nearly straight line with the spine as the hips continue to rotate. And, most importantly, the head will stabilize. This is when the head stops moving, not any time before.

By the way, the proper time for the hitter to get his front heel planted to begin rotation is when the ball is about two-thirds the way to the plate. Not sooner. Any earlier will cause the hitter to stop moving, only to have to restart if they decide to swing. This causes what I call a “top-down” swing. The shoulders start rotation instead of the hips. The hips are relatively dormant in that type of swing and there is very little energy transferred to the baseball. Those swings can only produce weak hits.

HIP AND SHOULDER SEPARATION You can also watch slow motion video to see how hitters “get into” rotation. As the front heel plants the back heel raises, allowing the pelvis to begin turning. If the back heel remained anchored in the ground the back leg would act as a tether since it is attached to the back hip. The back hip could only rotate as far forward as the length of the back leg would allow. So it is important to see the hitter get his back heel off the ground and allow rotation to begin.

There are a couple of key points to mention here. First, only the lower body, from the core downward, is beginning to rotate. Everything above the core remains static, but relaxed. Second, the efficient transfer of energy relies on the body segments activating in a specific sequence…from the ground up. So, first the feet will move, then the legs, then the pelvis and core, then the upper torso (shoulders), and then the hands (sometimes, and only a little).

The process of rotating the pelvis (hips) without shoulder rotation causes a quick stretch across three sets of abdominal muscles. They are the external and internal obliques, and the tranversus abdominis.

The more the hips rotate without the shoulders rotating, the more stretch is created across these sheets of muscles. This is called hip and shoulder separation. When they are stretched qui+ckly, they will contract reflexively, causing the upper torso (shoulders) to begin rotating. Eventually the shoulders will catch up to, and then surpass, the hips.

This is very much like stretching a rubber band, since all muscles are elastic. A stretched rubber band has more potential energy than one that is relaxed. This is why Hip/Shoulder Separation Davis, and all hitters who fire in sequence, rotates his hips at about 700 degrees/second, but rotates his shoulders at 900 degrees/second. When these abdominals contract they cause the torso to rotate. So the energy of that contraction is added to the rotational energy of the pelvis rotation causing an increase speed of about 200 degrees/second!

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Here is a photo of the abdominals along with an example of good hip/shoulder separation (you can see his numbers AND belt buckle): It doesn’t appear that massive hip/shoulder separation is needed to cause the stretch reflex across the abdominals, however. Mike Trout does not achieve large separation, for example, and yet he has no problem hitting the ball hard.

So don’t feel like you need to teach big separation.

Again, everyone is genetically unique, and as such has a unique response to stretching and contracting.

Actually, engaging the stretch reflex in skeletal muscles is more about the speed in which the muscle is stretched, as opposed to the length.

Regardless of the physiology, the take-home message is that some hip and shoulder separation occurs in the best hitters, and always in the balls that are hit the farthest.

BARREL LAG and STAYING CONNECTED Since energy travels upward through the body, and the body segments should activate in sequence from the ground up, nothing about the upper torso, especially anything having to do with the hands, has changed at this point in the swing.

All of the common phrases like “quick hands”, “throw the hands”, “trust your hands”, or anything about “hand path” are all misconceptions rooted in conventional wisdom. The fact of the matter is that no good hitter has ever done any of those things.

The phrase I like to use is one that Oregon State Head Coach Pat Casey uses with his hitters…”stay connected.” What this means is that the hands remain still in relation to the back shoulder as the torso rotates. Prior to lower half rotation, the hands can do whatever they want. Remember Davis talking about the movement of his hands, and that he didn’t even know he moved them so much? Anything a hitter dose with his hands prior to front heel plant and pelvic rotation is just part of his natural timing mechanism. It’s a way to help him synchronize his rhythm with the pitcher’s delivery.

In our camps, we tell players and coaches that we will only use the word “hands” to tell them not to think about their hands! The hands are along for the ride. What we do tell them is that the body delivers the barrel. The hands do not.

This concept is enormously important to understand. Below is an example of Giancarlo Stanton hitting a 470’ home run last season:

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The first thing to notice (since we can’t see his feet) in the initial photo is his hip/shoulder separation (the hips have started rotating before the shoulders). Next, take notice of where his hands are in relation to his back shoulder in the same photo.

Now, look at his hands/shoulder relationship in each subsequent photo. Notice that the distance between the hands and shoulder in the first photo is the same in every photo until the final two frames.

That is “staying connected.”

His hands do not move from their initial starting point relative to the shoulder until shoulder rotation is nearly complete. The hands and shoulder simply move as one relaxed piece as rotation occurs. His hands then continue forward away from the shoulder only 4 inches to the contact point on this particular swing.

Without the computer measuring that distance, you can simply see it by comparing the bend in the elbow in the first photo to the last photo. In the first photo, the inner angle of the back arm is just less than 90 degrees. In the final photo at contact it is bent at 90 degrees, meaning he had to straighten his arm just a few inches.

Also notice the terrific barrel lag in the sixth frame. The bat is pointed back at the catcher and although you can’t see it in this frame, the baseball is only about 5 feet away at this point. So many amateurs are what I call, “in a hurry to swing.” They worry they’ll “be late” so they begin to break connection (move hands away from back shoulder) before rotation is nearly complete.

They do not allow the body to deliver the barrel. They make the hands deliver the barrel, which is much less efficient. In other words, when a player gets “handsy” too early in the swing (out of sequence), they

20 simply lose the ability to transfer energy efficiently, and therefore, lose the ability to drive the baseball. I will show you some examples of handsy swings in the next section.

I also use the example of chopping a tree with an axe to teach the concept of staying connected. If the goal is to bury the axe blade as deeply as possible into the tree with one swing, how would you do it?

Would you “throw” the axe into the tree by swinging your arms? Or would you drive it into the tree by keeping your arms close to your body and using your body’s rotation to supply the force? Instinctively, you would do the latter. Here are a few photos of professional lumberjacks to demonstrate my point:

I’m sure each of these guys could hit bombs! They really understand how to efficiently transfer energy while staying balanced and holding posture (which we’ll discuss soon). It’s impressive. The only difference is their contact point. Since the boards they stand on are stuck into the tree, they have to make contact in front of the front foot. But they still stay connected because of the angle at which they attack the tree. It is exactly like a hitter getting his barrel on the inside pitch! The only way to do that and keep it fair is to stay connected.

Staying connected also offers two large advantages beyond efficient energy transfer. First, the Stanton example is one I chose because the contact point is perfect, and it is easy to see. But rarely does perfection happen. By staying connected through rotation, with the hands moving last in the kinetic chain, it allows the hitter to use his hands to adjust to pitch speed and location. If rotation is nearly complete, and the hands move last, energy is conserved and transferred into the baseball. In other words, players can still drive the baseball by moving their hands if their hands are the last thing to move.

Also, staying connected allows a hitter to get the barrel to the inside pitch without pulling it foul. In the Davis article they talk about his hands “staying close to his chest.” It’s actually the shoulder, but the idea is correct. Staying connected is not the same thing as “staying inside the ball,” however, because simply keeping your hands inside the plane of the pitch does not mean they are necessarily connected to the shoulder. Remember, being efficient means moving in sequence. And to be most efficient, the hands move last since they are at the top of the chain.

CONTACT POINT That topic leads right into the next…contact point.

Take a look again at Stanton’s contact point in the final frame of the photo series above. Notice how deeply in his stance he makes contact. It is just ahead of his center of gravity (belly button). The ball flew

21 470 feet. There is a correlation. The longest home runs (the ones that are hit the hardest) typically have one thing in common. The contact point is somewhere deeper than the front foot.

But again, what matters most is the sequence. If the hands are the last thing to move, energy is being transferred efficiently. So a hitter can make a small adjustment on the way to the pitch and break connection in order to not swing and miss. Here are a couple examples of early contact that resulted in home runs because the hitter fired in sequence from the ground up:

The contact point in the Davis photo (right) is deceiving. Since the photo was taken from a rear angle it appears that contact is further forward than it really is. But you get the idea. Contact point does not have to be perfect as long as the sequence of movements is.

The easiest thing to teach your players is that their mindset should be to make contact anywhere inside the front foot, but that deeper is better. And the reason is because the barrel is actually accelerating until it catches up to center of gravity (CG). Anything past CG and the barrel is decelerating until it finally stops when the backswing is complete. And, obviously, a hitter wants to make contact when his bat is moving the fastest.

Here a few examples of extremely “handsy” swings. They appear to be two-strike swings. You can see that rotation stopped very early in the swing because the hitter was intent on using his hands to deliver the bat. Remember the Bernstein Principle from talking point #4? These guys were obviously trying to “just put the ball in play.” So the hips started, stopped, and the hands flew forward. This is all too common, and an ugly way to go down! I spoke with Blake Treinin (Washington Nationals pitcher) this offseason. He said MLB pitchers call these “dummy swings.” Enough said.

22 POSTURE Finally, we are to the last mechanical topic, posture. Picture the rotor mast of the helicopter below:

As the blades begin to spin, they pull outward on the mast. The faster they spin the more they pull. Also notice that each blade is evenly spaced around the mast and is exactly the same as the other blades.

This balance allows the mast to stay upright during rotation as each blade pulls outward with the same amount of force.

What do you think would happen if the blades were out of balance, or one blade weighed more than the others? Can you picture how this could cause the mast to be pulled in the direction of the unbalanced blade as it rotated? That is what happens in an inefficient swing.

The mast is the hitter’s spine, and the blades are the plane the barrel creates as it moves around the hitter during torso rotation. See the pictures to the right. It is important to note that the barrel plane (the darkened area circling the skeleton in the photo) is approximately equal to the angle of shoulder tilt and approximately perpendicular to the spine. So when I talk about posture I am mainly referring to the angle of the hitter’s spine.

The main point to understand is that posture should remain constant once torso rotation has started. If the spine tilts in any direction during rotation, energy is spent, and less is transferred to the end of the kinetic chain.

It does not matter if a player starts more upright than tilted. That is unique to each player. You will see the more upright player, however, change posture before torso rotation begins. He does this because he “knows” that to put the barrel on plane in an efficient way he has to stay connected AND match the plane of the pitch. And the only way to accomplish both things is by tilting his spine.

23 We live in three dimensions. A hitter’s posture can change in any of them. The X-axis is the line from the hitter to the pitcher, or the linear axis. The Y-axis is a line straight up and down through a hitter’s spine.

It measures elevation, or up and down. The Z-axis is the line from a hitter’s chest that extends across the plate toward the other batter’s box. It is easy to see, and even measure, movement in the X and Y planes using regular video, but it requires 3D equipment to measure movements in the Z plane.

The reason I mention this is because postural problems during a swing often happen in the Z plane. So it is helpful to take video of hitters from across the plate and from behind the plate, or the pitcher’s perspective. That way you can see if they are “breaking posture” across the plate. This happens most often on pitches that are low or outside. Good hitters maintain posture regardless of pitch location.

A good posture is one that stabilizes as that front heel plants during a hitter’s linear move. That’s also when the head stabilizes, and the head is at the top of the spine, so it makes sense that the position of the spine would have to remain stable as well. Then, rotation occurs using the spine as the axis.

Referring back to the barrel plane photo, you can see that if a hitter changes his spinal angles in any direction (axis), he will in turn change the swing plane . For example, if the hitter breaks posture over the plate, the swing plane becomes steeper.

A common problem is for a hitter to invert negatively (away from the pitcher). This looks like he is leaning backward toward the catcher.

This is usually caused by the hitter striding forward with his foot but not moving his head (staying balanced). This creates an upward swing plane.

At right is an example.

For a player with an upward swing, then, the fix is not to emphasize hand path. Remember, hands do very little. It is to correct their posture by emphasizing to them they need to let their head travel and land balanced after their linear movement.

Below is a look at good posture, and postural stability, taken from a Josh Hamilton swing that resulted in a home run.

1

2

3

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Photo 1 shows his vertical posture at contact. Photo 2 shows his spinal tilt at heel plant. Photo 3 shows his spinal tilt at contact. Notice in Photo 1 that his posture is perfectly vertical. And notice that his spinal tilt remains exactly the same between Photo 2 and Photo 3. The axis of his rotation is stable (like the helicopter). There is no leakage of energy. This is a clinic, especially when you consider that the pitch is at the knees.

6. It should be obvious now how both Williams and Lau are correct. The process of the swing begins with a linear movement. The purpose of that movement is twofold. First, it is a timing mechanism. It is much easier to time (rhythm) a pitcher when a hitter’s body is in motion. Think of it as dancing.

The pitcher sets the tempo of the dance. It is up to the hitter to match that tempo, just like we do by tapping our foot as we listen to a song. He needs to be moving to “feel” the rhythm set by pitcher.

Second, Isaac Newton’s first law of motion states that “an object in the state of uniform motion tends to remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it.” This is why good hitters are not statues in the batter’s box. The body needs to already be in a state of motion before the hitter decides to swing (rotate) at a pitch. Inertia (the amount of resistance an object has to a change in its motion) has already been overcome by the linear movement. The body is now in motion and has less resistance to a change in that motion, such as beginning to rotate.

The rotational part of the swing does not start until the front heel is planted in the ground, which starts the front side block. The block promotes rotation of the hips. That rotational energy is then transferred upward through the torso and out to the baseball.

7. Obviously, anyone who hits a baseball has to have their hands “inside” the plane of the pitch. A bat is at least 30 inches long, so the hands are always inside the pitch. It’s a meaningless phrase really.

Hopefully, you now know that “staying inside the ball” is really about keeping the hands connected to the back shoulder as long as possible. Good hitters don’t move their hands from their initial position near the back shoulder until rotation is nearly complete. Once the hands do move independently (forward if early, away from body if pitch is outside), they move a matter of inches anyway.

At right is a clip from a very recent (August, 2015) FanGraphs interview of Josh Donaldson talking about the hands: Remember, emphasizing anything about hands during a swing is likely to create a hitter that fires out of sequence, and minimizes his hitting potential. Staying connected promotes both bat speed and bat quickness.

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This is probably a good place to mention something about swing “length” as well. So many coaches talk about “short” and “long” swings. And really, it’s ridiculous because they are relying on nothing more than their eyes to tell them the “length” of a swing. True “swing length” is determined by measuring the distance the end of the barrel travels through space from the moment it is launched to contact with the ball. Do you think it is humanly possible to measure that with your eyes? No. It’s ridiculous. It can only be done with computerized 3D analysis.

What they are probably “seeing”, then, is bat quickness. Or, the amount of time it takes the barrel to get from launch to contact.

They think a quick bat equals a short length. But in reality, the two are relatively unrelated. I’ll use the example of a drag race to demonstrate my point.

Two cars are lined up at the same starting line. One car is a Ferrari, the other a Volkswagen. There is no finish line. Instead they are trying to seeing how far they can travel in 0.15 seconds. The drivers hit the gas at the exact same time but the Ferrari travels much farther than the Volkswagen in the allotted time. How can this be since both drivers hit the gas at the same time? Obviously, it is because the Ferrari accelerates more quickly than the Volkswagen. It covered more distance in the same amount of time.

And since it covered more distance in the same amount of time, it was also travelling faster than the slower car at the moment time expired. That is just like a hitter. If a player can learn to accelerate their bat more quickly, they will actually have more bat speed at the moment of contact by increasing the length of their swing!!

The next time you hear someone talking about a “long swing” keep that in mind. Length and time are relative. Being “short” to the ball is another hitting myth that is rooted in subjectivity. Quickness is what matters!

Staying connected helps bat quickness by reducing the size of the diameter of rotation. If you look at a hitter from above, he rotates circularly. His spine is the axis (middle of the circle) and the tip of the bat defines the outside edge of the circle as he rotates. A smaller circle lowers the moment of inertia, making rotation quicker. It’s what an ice skater does to spin faster. When they pull their arms and legs in toward their axis of rotation (spine), they spin faster.

The final advantage to staying connected I will discuss is that it helps put the barrel on plane with the pitch earlier in the swing than trying to use the hands to do so. Swing trainers and instructors that teach hitters to swing “down” to a pitch because it is “shorter” are only hurting the hitter. Spinal angle and shoulder tilt, as I mentioned earlier, put the barrel on plane with the pitch, not the hands. Staying connected and using the body to deliver the bat is more forceful and consistent.

A steep barrel angle (down to the ball) allows almost no margin for error in timing and slices through

26 the actual plane on the pitch. Some coaches think it helps produce backspin as well, but it does so artificially by “cutting” the ball much like a cut shot in tennis. True backspin is a result of the ball compressing against the barrel.

8. Tom Verducci, author of this Sports Illustrated article does a great job starting the article with a line about the kinetic chain, and ending with a line about proper sequencing of movements. That is really the essence of being efficient and creating maximal force.

Remember, everything should move from the ground up. First feet, then hips, core, torso, shoulders, and finally the hands.

Sequence, sequence, sequence!!

9. With all due respect to Kevin Long, I do not believe it takes a “special person” to change their swing and have success. What I think it takes is a special coach. One that knows what really matters in a swing and what doesn’t.

The vast amount of misinformation and conventional wisdom polluting the waters of baseball instruction makes it very difficult for players to actually reach their genetic potential. Most instructors work from within those murky waters, and often provide information or practice drills that are well-intentioned but lack real benefit. In fact, many even promote the formation of a different inefficiency while failing to address the one they intended to in the first place.

An example of this is something I heard just last week. I was scouting a potential college recruit on a high school team bound for their state tournament. The third base coach, with intentions to encourage his young batter, yelled out “okay, now stay back and drive the ball.” I smiled to myself knowing those two things are mutually exclusive. The more a hitter “stays back” the less ability he has to hit a ball hard!

Conclusion I assume that some, or maybe a lot, of what you read contradicted your current baseball belief system. I understand. I taught things to players that I now know limited their ability to reach their true potential. Their results would somehow improve, but now I realize that a lot of that was in spite of my instruction!

There is definitely something to say for repetitions in this game, even without helpful instruction.

But, ultimately, that comes at a price for the player. I remember one specific player I coached who had a shot a pro ball. He was very athletic, ran a 6.5 sec 60yd dash, but was a handsy hitter, partly due to my biomechanical ignorance at the time. Five pro clubs worked him out prior to the draft, but his name was never called. I have to live with thinking that my ignorance may have cost him his chance at his dream.

Please keep in mind that this information has been available since at least 1995, when the first 3D swing analyses were conducted. Each study since that time has demonstrated the same things. This information is not my opinion. It is not the opinion of anyone else either. It is just data, objective and free from bias.

27 I have used this information for the past four years, since being introduced to it in. It has helped marginal high school players improve to reach the collegiate level, and college players reach their potential, and the professional ranks.

It is slowly trickling into mainstream baseball, and will arrive in full force when presented to the American Baseball Coaches Association annual convention within the next few years.

I hope you enjoyed it. Feel free to contact me with any questions.

Dr. Tom Bobrowski (bobrowt@gmail.com)