Get Ready to Hit - Mar 16
In order two be a good hitter, you have to have two things, good swing mechanics and good timing. If you have a beautiful swing and your timing sucks, you won’t hit. And vice versa. We spend a lot of time, some time too much, working on mechanics and not incorporating timing in our drills. Players have to learn body control and timing to be able to execute a good swing. The one thing I noticed as a constant in big league camp was how much players worked on getting into position on time. Working on getting loaded in time and to a good hitting position is the one thing I noticed those guys working on daily. They all have good swings but they know that if they are not ready to hit in time, their swings won’t work like they are supposed to. A good hitter trusts his swing and has a game plan when he gets to the plate. Young hitters struggle with this. They are worried about fixing their swings all the time and can’t get themselves to the point of trust and or plan. Situational hitting is obviously crucial to your team or any team’s success. But, they have to get the point where they are consistently in a good position to hit before you can expect them to execute. They are also putting tons of pressure on themselves to impress scouts, agents, scouts, fans, coaches, etc. Their focus is not winning the game or executing in the box. They are focusing on results instead of the process of achieving the result. When your focus is on the result you mess up the process. We have no control of anything else but what happens in the batters box. But we try to control everything. Impossible. Our focus needs to be on controlling what we can, which is getting ready to hit, seeing and tracking the ball and trying to execute the swing we have worked on hundreds of times in the cage.