Through the course of my baseball career I have heard a handful of baseball hitting terms like “throw the hands”, “stay on top of the ball”, “stay inside”, “get back spin”, “hit the innner half”.
A lot of young hitters have been taught that going straight to the ball means taking the hands from were they are in the hitting stance to the point of contact.
Coaches use the rule of thumb that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. Yes this may be true, but we arent connecting dots we are trying to hit a fast ball coming down at an angle. The higher level we play at, the harder this becomes.
I’m not a fan of terms like “chop down on the ball”, “Get back spin”, or “go straight to the ball”, simply becuase the terms teaches the hitters to have their bat head cut the hitting zone in half instead of staying through it for as long as humanly possible.
Chopping down on the ball will take away the time that your bat stays in the zone, and ask any professional baseball players that see’s 90+ fast balls on a daily basis. Having the correct bat plane is everything.
If you need proof of what bat angle you should take, simply look at the bat head of any big league hitter. Imagine a square box floating above the plate. Look at the swing plane and you will see that the bat head comes through the side of the box, so that the swing plane is level with the trajectory of the pitch.
Their swing doesn’t cut through the box!
Luckily this is a simple adjustment that can be fixed with tee work. You can find a list of hitting tips and drills here. As well as other batting tips throughout this site.
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