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HITTING TIPS

THE FOUNDATION OF HITTING - Watch Video
Hitting .300 is as simple as learning the foundation of hitting. Coaches and instructors often make the mistake of complicating what is a very simple process. We tend to confuse kids by getting them to think about a bunch of technical jargon when the basic foundation will do the job. With these Hitting Tips, I am going to give you a conventional and solid basis for everything you will do as a hitter, from day one. When you get to the higher levels—high school, college and pro ball—and you are already pretty good and other people think you can hit, then it’s okay to experiment with different techniques if you think they will help you hit the ball better. But to get started, watch the video clips to learn all the basics of hitting that lay the groundwork for success:

THE STANCE - Watch Video
The foundation is your stance. When you stand in the batter’s box you want to be comfortable. I favor a shoulder-width stance for its simplicity and its ability to help you stay balanced. I always tell kids: Make sure you are balanced on the bottom of your feet, as this will allow you to swing the bat with consistency. The goal is to be able to take the bat from Point A to Point B. This movement starts with a simple stance, with your feet pointing in a straight line to the ball.

Put the bat on your shoulders to start the hands. Now that we’ve talked about the feet being fairly straight in the stance and the stride moving in a straight line, the next element is proper hand alignment. My advice is to lay the bat on your shoulders; as you pick the bat up your hands are in a solid position to hit the baseball. The goal is to get your hands in a nice relaxed position to start the swing.

Summary: A shoulder-width stance; a good balanced position, see the release point—the zone around where a pitcher will release the baseball; and your hands are in a nice relaxed position on the bat.

THE STRIDE - Watch Video
The Stride should also take you in a straight line. If you were to draw a straight line from the batter to the pitcher—that’s how I want you to stride. If I stride open—if I’m stepping back away from the pitcher, it will force my front-side shoulder to come out, and then I have to open my hips early. Next thing you know I’m dropping my hands and I won’t be able to take a straight path to the ball.

For me, the key to success is to take a straight path to the ball, to get back to basics. If you follow that straight path your hips stay square (again, lined up with the pitcher) and at that point you can take the bat directly to the ball.

Remember that the shortest distance between two points (the batter and the pitcher’s release point) is a straight line. Any deviation from the straight line will make your swing longer. That’s when you hear comments like: “He has to drag his bat through the strike zone.”

Avoid overstriding or lunging at the pitch. If you stride too far your head starts to move and you won’t get a good look at the pitch.

RHYTHM & BALANCE - Watch Video
The whole game of baseball is based on being in balance—fielding, running and hitting all depend on balance, and that’s what will determine your progress and success in everything you do on the baseball field.

You have to go back to go forward. This rule applies to almost any athletic activity. If you are a runner on a track the objective is to create some type of momentum; you want to lean back-- that’s why a sprinter uses blocks—before exploding forward. A cat that’s on the prowl is in a coiled position before it strikes—same thing with a snake that’s coiled—essentially moving in reverse—before striking at its prey.

For hitting, there needs to be a little bit of lean back to initiate the swing before you stride forward. You’ll see some hitters do a little step back, which is often called the “toe-tap.” Chipper Jones of the Atlanta Braves does this and it works well for him: He steps back and then goes forward. I’m not an advocate of the toe-tap, but you have to do something in your swing to get your weight to go back before moving forward.

Think of this triggering mechanism as a bow and arrow: You have to draw the bow back slowly and then let it go so that it can hit its target. Same thing with hitting: It’s a slow step back to trigger the movement—the coiling of the snake, and then a smooth move forward. As you pick up your front foot you should be able to stand on one leg. If I pick up my front foot and fall forward it’s a sure bet that my balance is off.

Here’s how it all works together in sequence: I’m relaxed and ready as I step into the batter’s box with a shoulder-width stance. I’ve got the bat in the position where I picked it up off my shoulders, the pitch is coming, I pick my foot up and I have to go back before going forward or I’ll be unbalanced at the outset of the swing.

Weight transfer = keep your head down on the ball. Shift your weight from back to middle to the point of contact as you keep your head down on the ball. I’m swinging down on the ball as if I’m chopping down a tree with an ax.

THE GRIP - Watch Video
Grip is the key to success or failure with any bat. When I was coaching my kids back in Evansville, Indiana, I noticed that they would always squeeze the bat too hard rather than applying a relaxed grip. What’s more, kids can’t understand the concept of putting the bat in the fingertips and lining up the knuckles. For proper knuckle alignment, you want to line up the middle knuckles of your fingers on both hands.

I started wondering about the possibility of a bat design that would set the right knuckle alignment and fingertip grip automatically.

I decided to move forward with the idea of making bats to get more kids to try this new design. It’s funny because I started this company out of a simple idea to help my kids use their hands better on the bat, to make hitting easier and more comfortable. But you put the bat in your hand and the first thought that pops in your head is, “This is perfect. It fits right in the fingertips. You don’t have to think about what you’re doing; the bat does everything for you.”

THE SWING - Watch Video
In a perfect world you want a shorter swing that goes directly from Point A to Point B because simplicity is better: As pitchers throw harder, a longer swing will give you less time to make adjustments. We’re talking about time and distance: A swing on a straight line puts your hands straight to the path of the pitch. If you have a longer swing, though, your path is not quite as direct and that little movement will end up causing you trouble.

Fall back on the foundation we covered previously: A square (square = straight-line to the ball) stance; square stride, with the bottom hand going to the ball; moving from Point A to Point B. This is the foundation for a shorter swing that will cut down on your strikeouts and improve your ability to make contact with consistency.
The only way to apply the solid foundation of hitting is with a fluid, controlled and relaxed swing. That’s a given, and yet one of the biggest problems facing young hitters is that they grip the bat way too hard.

All this talk about proper mechanics and the foundation of hitting goes out the window if you are squeezing the bat instead of applying a relaxed grip. Let the bat feel relaxed in your hand so that the wrist action is like casting a fishing line or popping a whip. Casting a fishing line calls for a flick of the wrist. The same flick-of-the-wrist technique applies to swinging a baseball bat.

The Inside/Out Swing—your hands lead the bat head. An inside/out hitter keeps his hands inside the baseball. I like the concept of the inside/out swing because it keeps you focused on the straight-line mechanics that are the foundation of hitting. Let’s say you get a pitch to hit in the middle part of the plate. If you have a good swing—and you are making sure your hands are inside of the ball, you will hit the ball in three or four different places and it will look as if you hit the ball on the nose. You can hit a bullet to left-center, a bullet to dead center, a bullet to right-center and probably hit the ball hard down either line. In each case it would look like you hit the ball right on the nose.

The hands go back slowly; you go directly to the ball; and you hit it in different spots, depending on the location of the pitch, to spray the ball to all fields.

The pitch that nips the outside corner has to come farther to you, and so you’ll have to hit it back farther, or deeper, towards you at the plate. A left-handed batter will shoot that pitch towards left; a right-handed hitter will shoot that pitch towards right. The ball you hit up the middle is a ball you hit a little farther out in front of you and it’s located towards the middle part of the plate. Remember that you have to hit the ball where it’s pitched; that’s basic. So the one solid swing we’ve been working on will allow you to hit the ball to leftfield, centerfield or right.

FOLLOW-THROUGH - Watch Video
I prefer “finish your swing” to the concept of the “follow-through” on the swing. You always hear about “staying through the ball” and that simply means to leave your head down and finish your swing. Don’t look up and start pulling off as soon as you hit the ball. The goal is to hit through the ball and then look for it after making contact.

When you hear baseball analysts or coaches talk about “full extension” of the bat all they really mean is to “finish the swing.” Swing to the ball and swing through the ball. If you are trying to chop down a tree with an ax you never stop short at the point of contact. You want to chop as if you are cutting all the way through that tree.

It’s the same deal with swinging a baseball bat. If you stop the swing and look up as soon as you hit the ball you end up falling backwards. Now, if I swing through the ball my transfer of weight keeps me going and I’ll rotate through the ball and finish my swing.

Excerpts above are from "Don Mattingly's Hitting Is Simple: The ABC's of Batting .300.

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