Category Archives: Hitting
Strikeouts happen
I was having a discussion with one of my students last week about hitting and her approach to the plate when she admitted, “If I strikeout, it really bums me out. It’s tough to go up and hit again.” (I doubt she really said bums me out, but that’s the way my 54 year old brain remembers it.)
I understand that. No one likes to go to the plate and strikeout. It’s the ultimate failure — you had three (or more) shots at hitting the ball and missed on all of them. But really, strikeouts are a part of the game. Since all of fastpitch softball is essentially built on failure and your ability to overcome it, hitters have to learn to get past the immediate feeling and go on with the rest of the game. Otherwise they’re not going to have too much fun. Unless it’s becoming a habit, in which case they probably need to work on seeing the ball better.
So to help her gain a little perspective, I gave her a Babe Ruth quote: Every strikeout brings me one at bat closer to my next home run.
That got me to thinking. I know the Bambino hit 714 homes runs in his career, a record that stood for many years and was considered unbreakable until Hank Aaron broke it. But how many times did The Sultan of Swat strikeout? The answer, according to the Baseball Almanac , is 1,330. Or almost twice as many times as he hit home runs.
That’s a lot, isn’t it? Must put him pretty close to the top of the list, right? Not even close. The Babe actually sits at #95, just behind Dean Palmer and just ahead of Deron Johnson. Which of course begs the question who are your all-time leaders? Surely they must be some pretty bad players.
Well, first of all in order to make the list you had to have a lot of at bats, which really bad players don’t get. That narrows it down some. In truth, the top 10 all-time includes some names you might recognize. In order, they are: Mr. October Reggie Jackson (with a whopping 2,597); Jim Thome; Sammy Sosa; Andrews Galarraga; Jose Canseco; Willie Stargell; Mike Schmidt; Fred McGriff; Tony Perez and Mike Cameron. Lots of Hall of Famers on that list. Thome and Cameron are still active too, so they have a chance to move up.
Right behind these guys is a player whose swing is often used as the model youth baseball and softball players should follow: good ol’ A-Rod, Alex Rodriguez. That’s probably not news to you Yankees fans. Other prominent names in the top 50 include Lou Brock, Mickey Mantle, Adam Dunn, Derek Jeter, Barry Bonds (the current career home run record holder) and Willie Mays. Even Pete Rose, who holds the all-time record for hits in a career with 4,256 struck out 1,143 times.
If you’d like to see the full list, you can find it here. It definitely puts things into perspective as you check out your favorite superstars and see how often they struck out too.
The point, though, is they didn’t let it get them down. They just put it behind them and went on to the next at bat. That’s what fastpitch hitters have to do too. You can say you’re taking your cue from the Hall of Famers, and the greatest to ever play the game.
Fun drill for softball hitting vision training
Got this softball hitting vision training drill when I was the NFCA Coaches College in Minneapolis back in November. We tried it today and it was a lot of fun, both for the girls and the parents who participated.
The only equipment you need is a bucket of wiffle balls. You need at least two colors, although the balls should be predominently one color. It’s really easy to do this in batting cage because you can go from side to side. Here’s how it works.
Have a player stand with her back to one side of the cage. Set the wiffle balls on the ground on the other side of the cage, with one or two people kneeling. I used two parents today, which allowed them to be involved while freeing me to work with other players.
The tossers begin tossing a barrage of balls at the player. She knocks away all but one color of ball. Those she catches, and tosses back into the mix. The faster the barrage of balls goes, the more difficult (and fun it is). Having two tossers makes the barrage come faster, and from more directions, adding to the challenge.
For ours today, I had white, blue, purple and yellow balls. The girls had to catch the four yellow balls out of the two dozen coming at them.
It really forces hitters to ignore distractions and focus on the ball — exactly what you want to have happen at the plate. It also helps them work on their hand-eye coordination, as catching the ball under those conditions isn’t easy.
It’s definitely a way to energize your practices too. Give it a try!
Helping slappers learn to stay in on the plate
Converting a right-handed hitter into a lefty slapper has any number of challenges — not the least of which is it’s awkward as all get-out. To get some small measure of just how tough it is to make that move, take one day and do everything with your opposite hand — eat, write, deal cards, whatever.
Now picture that in addition to those things you’re doing them while moving, and while whatever it is you’re trying to do is moving too. Hey, hitting is tough enough. But doing it opposite-handed while running toward the pitcher? That’s just nuts.
Yet it can be worth all the effort, because a girl who can put the ball in play and get up the line fast enough to put pressure on the defense is highly valuable. After all, as Coach Candrea says, speed never has a slump.
So yes, there are lots of good reasons to do it. But it takes a lot more than just moving the hitter across the plate and saying “watch how Natasha Watley does it.”
One of the toughest parts is learning to keep the shoulders closed toward the plate so the hitter can drive the ball toward the left side of the infield. That’s important, of course, to make the throw take longer and give the hitter the best chance of getting on base. But after taking the crossover step, especially for a righty that is being converted over, it’s very natural to turn the shoulders along with the hips as shown in the first video. When that happens, the hitter is far more likely to pull the ball to the right or hit it back at the pitcher than to drive it to the left.
You can tell her to keep her shoulders in, but that’s easier said than done. So here’s a more specific instruction. Tell her that as her left foot crosses over her right, she should pull her left shoulder back. When that occurs (as seen in the second video clip) the shoulders stay closed and she’s in a good position to slap.
It’s simple, but it works!
Least favorite softball hitting drills – Part one
There are a lot of great drills out there to help fastpitch softball hitters learn to hit more effectively. Then there are some that seem to have no purpose at all. They might appear to be a good idea, but in truth they work counter to what you’re probably trying to accomplish. Today I’m going to talk about one of them. Don’t bother looking for part two right away — it’ll happen when it happens.
Anyway, the drill is one I used to use. There are plenty of names for it, but I’m going to refer to it as rapid fire. Essentially, a coach gets down into soft toss position, and then starts tossing balls at the hitter in rapid succession. As soon as one ball is hit the next ball is tossed. Keep doing that for 10 or 15 tosses.
Theoretically, the drill is used to teach hitter to have a quick bat. Yet it’s completely useless for that, because the swing you end up taking has nothing to do with your game swing. All you really wind up doing is swatting madly at the ball in order to keep up. In fact, in my opinion this drill probably does more harm than good because it works against the principles of good hitting.
What is one of the keys to good hitting? It’s timing — recognizing the pitch speed and creating a controlled explosion into the ball. When you’re doing rapid fire soft toss you have no opportunity for timing whatsoever. There’s no load, no stride/weight shift, no connection, no rotation into the ball, no extentions after contact, nothing. You just use your hands and arms. Is it any wonder that players who are forced to do this drill repeatedly end up with wimpy arm swings? If your goal is to get your players to pop up and ground out, this is the drill for you!
Another thing it does is destroy any semblance of a good bat path to the ball. The hands go wherever they have to in order to make contact. Most of the time that’s somewhere other than where the hands should be when swinging. And the worse the coach is at tossing, the worse the bat path will be.
But what about batspeed? Doesn’t it at least help with that? Not really. Batspeed is the culmination of a number of things in the swing. Personally, I think the hands and wrists are one of the least important contributors. So a drill that isolates them isn’t going to do much. Except maybe encourage an early wrist roll.
Bottom line is any drill that sacrifices good hitting mechanics, and the core principles of hitting, for some isolated (and perceived) gain is a bad drill. If you’re using it, drop it from your practice plan. Now. Before you do the kind of damage hitting coaches have to spend weeks to undo.
If you want to develop batspeed, have your hitters learn to use their bodies more effectively. Make sure you understand the kinetic chain of hitting so each body part is firing in order, at the right time. Speed up the pitching machine or have your hitters stand closer while you front toss. Anything but fire ball after ball at them.
As I said, I used to use this drill too. Then I learned better. You can do the same.
What would Babe Ruth do?
This isn’t exactly fastpitch softball, but it does have to do with baseball — and it’s a really interesting article. My friend Ray Minchew sent it to me, so thanks, Ray.
The article was written Bill James, the guru behind The Baseball Abstract — that statistical analysis that once was looked down upon by the baseball Powers That Be but now is the Bible, or at least the law book, of the sport. But this time he’s not talking about statistics; he’s talking about all the gnashing of teeth over the use of steroid and how they’ve affected the record books.
As he looks at the current troubles, he harkens back to Babe Ruth and what he was like. I mean, you have to love an article that starts like this:
“First of all, I have absolutely no doubt that, had steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs existed during Babe Ruth’s career, Babe Ruth would not only have used them, he would have used more of them than Barry Bonds. I don’t understand how anyone can be confused about this. The central theme of Babe Ruth’s life, which is the fulcrum of virtually every anecdote and every event of his career, is that Babe Ruth firmly believed that the rules did not apply to Babe Ruth.”
Yet while he starts with a baseball premise, the always thoughtful James expands his premise to look at America as a whole and how we are really a nation of scofflaws at heart. We love our independence, and our right to do whatever we darn so please whenever we darn so please.
There’s more to it, but I can’t really do it justice her. Follow the link above and give it a look. It will make you smile and think at the same time.
Game to make batting practice more interesting
Batting practice can get boring sometimes. Ok, a lot of the time, especially when you’re working on a specific skill. But the other day I came up with an idea to make it a bit more interesting.
I was working with a hitter on generating a sacrifice fly with a runner on third. The idea was she had to hit an outfield fly ball no matter where the ball was pitched. We did it for a while, then we got serious.
Every time she hit a fly ball as required, she received a plus one. Every time she produced a popup or a weak ground ball, she received a minus one. A line drive or hard grounder was a “push” — neither plus nor minus. I could’ve made them minuses, but since they’d probably accomplish the goal of scoring the runner I decided to make them neutral.
You can set the game to any number you want. I selected five to keep things moving, and so the game was on. The object was to get to plus five before the hitter reached minus five.
Another variation would be to name two teams, such as the hitter’s first name v. her last name. The first name gets the pluses and the last name gets the minuses.
It’s fun, and it definitely puts some pressure on to perform. Next time you’re working on a specific hitting skill, give this game a try.
Live by the change, die by the change
Tonight in our game we had the opportunity to test something I wrote a few weeks back. In that post I talked about running on the changeup if you recognize it.
We were facing a pitcher with an excellent change. She maintained arm speed and the pitch was very deceptive. After seeing another pitcher who wasn’t nearly as strong, that change was pretty devastating. At first.
The problem was she knew how great it was too. She was absolutely in love with the pitch, and liked to throw it often. One of our hitters, a girl named Erin, led the way. First time up she struck out on two of the changes and one speed pitch. Next time up to bat, knowing it was coming, she just waited for it and then took a hack at it.
From there it was a slug fest. The pitcher kept throwing the change, and we just sat on it and pounded it. When our runners got on base they knew to look for it too and it was off to the races.
So the lesson here is not just for hitters but pitchers as well. There is such a thing as going to the well too often. It’s called a “change” for a reason. It should offer a change to keep hitters from getting too comfortable. But it doesn’t become much of a change if it’s happening all the time. Then it’s a “normal.”
Perhaps tonight’s pitcher’s plan was to work on her change. It was, after all, just a scrimmage game (or “friendly” as it’s called in some circles). If so, she certainly did. If not, however, she needs a new strategy. Doing anything too much makes you too predictable, and that can be deadly.
The only good donut is the edible kind
The other day, one of our players showed up with a new addition to her bag — one of those round “donuts” that you slip onto your bat. She was all happy about it until she saw the look of horror on my face. I told her those things don’t help you in the on-deck circle. They actually hurt you.
While you may think they’re making your bat faster, they’re actually making it slower. At least that’s what I remembered some experts saying. Generally speaking, heavier things are helpful for building strength, but they have to be balanced by something lighter than normal for speed; swinging a heavier bat trains you to swing slower.
Afterwards, though, I thought I’d best check on my facts to be sure that was still the thinking. You never know — things change in the game all the time. So I did an Internet search, but the results were inconclusive. Then I went out to the good oldDiscuss Fastpitch Forum and there it was. Down in a thread on batting cages was an embedded YouTube video from FSN Sport Science that studied the effect of using a donut (or any heavy weight for that matter) on swinging a bat.
For those who don’t have time to view the full video right away, I’m happy to report that I was correct. Those donuts are bad for your swing. In the video segment they not only show that it makes you swing a little slower rather than faster, it actually activates your slow-twitch muscles.
The full video is worth a look. You’ll have to scroll down a bit to see it. I tried to find it on YouTube directly but it doesn’t appear to be posted anymore — or else I don’t know how to search there.
Either way, if you have one in your bag take it out. Use it for a doorstop or a paperweight if you must, but not to prepare to swing on-deck. It’s not doing what you think it is.
Are the new, hotter bats killing the short game?
I don’t know about you, but it sure seems to me like the short game — traditionally one of the key strategies as well as one of the things that separates fastpitch softball from baseball — is going the way of wood bats. Certainly the most recent Women’s College World Series is evidence of that. Those games used to be 2-1 or even 1-0 10-inning affairs, not 15-9 blowouts. But you can even see it at the local level on ballfields all over country.
While more hitting instruction and moving the pitching rubber back have certainly contributed to more of a focus on power, I think there’s more to it than that. I can’t help but wonder if the newest, hottest bats don’t have something to do with it too. Not just the fact that a 5’2″, 95 lb. girl with a weak swing can drive a ball to a 200′ fence these days. But that the bats themselves are making it more difficult to be successful bunting. 
Consider how much the ball jumps off the bat on a regular swing. If you hit the sweet spot it flies. Now consider that many girls without good training also try to bunt the ball off the sweet spot (instead of the end of the bat as they should). What do you think happens when a hard pitch hits the sweet spot on a bunt? It goes too far, making the ball easier to field and the short game less successful.
You still can bunt with these new, hotter bats. But it takes more work. You have to pull back and “catch” the ball with the bat (instead of pushing out at it). And you have to use the end of the bat, which is a deader part of the bat and thus won’t hit the ball as far.
This is not a new technique. It’s been a standard part of bunting for at least as long as I’ve been coaching, and I’m sure for many years before that. But with the new bat technology it has become a lot more critical.
A good short game is still important to long-term success. Make the adjustment and you’ll have some great weapons at your disposal.
Slappers don’t seem to be getting the advantage they should
Ever since we upgraded our cable package I’ve the opportunity to see a lot more fastpitch softball games on TV. Since most teams have at least a couple if not several slappers, I’ve had the chance to see many of them in action. It has led to an interesting observation.
My understanding of the advantage of slapping is that the hitter starts a couple of steps closer to first and gets a running start toward the bag. Now, the first part is a function of the setup of the field. The left-hand batter’s box is a little closer to first than the right-hand box, so no problem there.
It’s the second part that strikes me as odd. A lot of the slappers I’ve seen sort of walk to the front of the box, take a swing, then start running. As a result, they’re not really getting a running start. In fact, most seems to be pretty much standing in one spot when they make contact. So where’s the advantage. If they’re going to just stand there, why bother with the slapping technique? Might as well just set up in the front of the box and swing away.
Slapping is a difficult technique to pull off well. So if you’re going to go to that effort, might as well get the full advantage out of it. The more you can be at a full (or nearly full) run, the faster you’ll get up the line and the more pressure you’ll put on the defense. So despite what the old song says, run don’t walk when you slap.
Life in the Fastpitch Lane 