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Stepping Up At The Plate
by Dave
Monday, August 01, 2005
You are already a good hitter. Your team relies on you to drive in the runs in tough situations. You sport a good batting average with quite a few extra-base hits. But no matter how good of a hitter you think you are, there's a pretty good chance that there's someone better in the next town, county or state. How do you get better? How do you take it to the next level?
There are a few mental and physical steps you can take to bring your hitting up a notch but before you do this, you need a serious period of introspection. Softball is largely a mental game once you get past the fundamental skills. Take a moment to sit down with a piece of paper and jot out your strengths and weaknesses. Ask yourself to seriously and honestly answer these questions:
- How well do you know the strike zone? This sounds easy but you may want to try to find an objective outsider for this assessment. Often hitters are totally convinced the pitch which just struck them out swinging was a strike or the pitch they just took for a called third strike was a ball. Getting outside opinions helps!
- How well do you handle the various pitch selections in the various quadrants of the strike zone, as well as those just outside of it? This requires total honesty because it is often difficult for a girl sporting a .400 average to admit she has a weakness. Maybe drop curves give you trouble. Maybe you can't lay off risers out of the zone. Great hitters form an honest assessment of their weaknesses.
- Do you use the entire field when you are hitting? Great hitters hit to all fields. Always pulling the ball, always hitting to the opposite field, or always hitting the long ball may not hurt early on in your career but being able to command where the ball is going, based on the pitch (most of the time) is the sign of a great hitter.
- Do you almost always do the right thing given the situation? This gets complicated but great hitters do more than hit for average. They move the runners over at the right time. They are able to generate sacrifice flies at key moments.
- Is there anything in particular you would like to accomplish as a hitter, besides hitting more homeruns, that you are not currently doing that you would like to be able to do?
Knowing The Strike Zone
Each at-bat is an opportunity for learning. As a hitter, there are numerous stresses on your head but somehow you need to find your more intelligent self when you are at the plate. The first exercise in improving your hitting is to really get to know the strike zone. In order to do this, you need outside input. On each pitch, I suggest you converse with the umpire. He or she calls a ball but you're not exactly sure where it was. After the pitch you step back from the box to get the sign from your coach, step back in, take a practice swing and get set. You've just wasted an opportunity for learning.
If you watch great hitters, you'll see a number have dialogues with the ump after every pitch. I'm not talking about those conversations like, "come-on ump, that was outside." I'm saying that if the ump calls an outside ball, ask how far outside that was and whether it was high or low. On strikes, ask how much of the plate did that pitch catch, which corner did it hit.
You need to train your eyes and brain. Getting instantaneous feed back is extremely valuable. Not every ump will engage and answer your questions but keep trying. You may even want to quickly explain to the ump that you are just trying to lock down your own understanding of the strike zone. If umpires see that you are asking them for their take on every pitch, they will quickly understand that you are not some wise-guy but rather a student of the game. If you see the same umps a lot, they will also gain respect for your approach. They will help you out and perhaps even give you a close pitch every now and again, especially if you are never argumentative on questionable calls.
The ump is only one resource. Your teammates and parents can also help you gain a better understanding of the zone. It is advisable when you get to other aspects of this hitting article, to chart the pitches you faced to the greatest extent possible. When charting pitches, you will need to have a good understanding of location. Your parents can help you with this. And as they become aware that you are very serious about going over the pitches you faced, they will become very important partners t you. Parents need something to do which helps you. Giving them responsibility for charting pitch location can turn your best allies into an even greater asset.
Charting Pitches
Absolutely every hitter has a weakness. There is a guy who plays for the Texas Rangers named Alfonso Soriano. He hits a ton of home runs, drives in runs and hits for a decent average. He earns millions of dollars playing baseball. But the guy can't lay off a low outside slider, and he can't hit them. If you've ever watched the movie "A League Of Their Own," you may remember how late in the film Geena Davis is the catcher for one team and her sister is a key player for another. Davis knows her sister "can't hit a high pitch, can't lay off'em" and tells her pitcher that. Every hitter has weaknesses. Get to know yours.
Kellie Wilkerson is a great hitter. I believe she was first or second in batting average in the NPF during her first season with the NY/NJ Juggernaut last year. This year she was a key component of Team USA in the World Cup. She hits the ball hard almost every time at the plate regardless of location or pitch type. I don't claim to know what her particular approach was when she was younger but it does strike me that this may not be just a natural talent. Any hitter who honestly assesses her weakness and works to rectify them, can become a better hitter.
What's your weakness? If you are totally honest, you won't stop at one. If you have the opportunity to work with a private coach, discuss what you think your weaknesses are. Get your coach's assessment and put more weight on that than you do on your own assessment. If you are on a team with a hitting coach, work with that coach to identify the pitches which give you the most trouble.
Once you have these identified, it can be difficult to attack them in practice. Your team may not have anyone who can throw you a down-and-in screwball if that is your problem. But regardless of whether you have to work on things in games or can do it in practice, your next step is to be able to identify these problem pitches as they come to the plate. On every pitch tell yourself what you just saw. If you need to, say them aloud but keep it to yourself. You don't want the catcher to gain any sort of advantage when you emphasize "screwball" after the pitcher just threw one. Say it under your breath but by saying it, you are forming a memory of what the pitch was. If you're not sure what you just saw, you can even ask the ump although he or she may not answer. Ask the question as a sort of joke, "Hey what was that? Was that a screwball? Did that break in or out?" The catcher may even answer questions like that!
Once you know your weakness and have become a batting student who analyzes what the pitcher has thrown, you can start to solve the problem. Sticking with the screwball example, if a pitcher throws you that inside and low screwball which gives you trouble, your first approach is to lay off the pitch, especially if it is borderline and the count is in your favor.
Most pitchers cannot throw a ball precisely to your weak point. Most hitters with a problem area will swing at their weak pitches when they are out of the strike zone. Your best approach is to take a strike if the pitch is marginal. In this manner, you will accomplish two things. First off, you won't be highlighting your problem. Secondly, you will discourage the pitcher from throwing this again. Pitcher's minds are such that if a batter looks really bad on a particular pitch, they want to throw it again. And they will remember this throughout the game, perhaps the season or tournament. But if a pitcher throws a pitch you take for a strike, especially if that was a marginal strike, they typically won't throw that pitch again because they don't know if you can hit it, they don't know if they can put it there again, and they don't know if it will be called a strike if they do put it there. Laying off tough pitches is your first line of defense.
Your second approach to dealing with problem pitches is to learn how to foul them off. If you are down in the count and don't feel comfortable taking a particular pitch, fouling it off raises the question in the mind of the pitcher whether you can hit it. Training yourself to hit fouls anytime you want increases the number of pitches you see in your at-bats, especially when you hit them on 3-2 counts.
Your first efforts to work on hitting fouls should be to the opposite field baseline. Hitting fouls off to your weak side is just easier than hitting them straight back. After you've gotten pretty good at this skill, you can work on hitting them straight back by focusing on hitting the bottom piece of the ball.
Once you've learned what your weak points are, how to lay off them when the count is in your favor, and how to foul them off when it isn't, you are ready to work on hitting them. Don't adjust your stance or swing to deal with trouble pitches and location. Learn through experience where you can successfully hit them. Hitting low-outside drop curves to right is a better approach than trying to pull them over the fence in left. Use your hear. Changing your stance or swing has serious implications you simply do not want to deal with. The best way to handle a tough pitch is to take it to the correct place.
Using The Entire Field
The ability to spray the ball around is not something hitters are born with. It takes lots of practice and a tremendous amount of discipline at the plate. If you do not feel as if you have command of the field as a hitter, while you are still sitting and analyzing your skills, take another piece of paper and draw a diamond with players in their positions. Now take some colored pencils and mark off the places on the field where you think the best places to hit the ball are. Obviously the gaps between short and third, second and first will be important ones. Then the gaps between the outfielders come to mind. Up the middle is another. Don't forget down the two baselines.
With this chart in front of you, pick up a different colored pencil. Now mark off the places where you typically hit the ball. You can start out with the easiest exercise, how often do you pull the ball vs. hit to the opposite field? Figure this into a percentage. If you pull the ball 50% of the time, you're already ahead of the game. If an honest assessment of that percentage is more like 75% or higher, you've got some work to do. But now that you have a sense of which side of the field you hit to and in what percentages, break these percentages down into your typical alleys. If you pull the ball 75% of the time and half of these are between short and third, draw a line there and write the number 37%. Then maybe you hit another 15% into the gap in left-center. Continue marking up the page to place percentages, adding to 100% or thereabouts, in the places on the field where you hit the ball. If you have done this honestly, you have a good diagram of where your alleys typically are. You can entitle this piece of paper as "spray assessment."
Now take another piece of paper and draw the same stuff or make a copy if you have a color copier. Your next step is to draw up a plan for how you would like to change your spray. Perhaps you would like to hit the ball to the opposite field more. Maybe your goal will be to increase your opposite field hitting by 10%, from a 75-25 mix to 65-35 one. Get out your colored pencils and mark up the paper to create your "spray goal" page. Keep in mind that there are certain alleys you want to take advantage of. If you are going to hit more balls to the right side, you should probably pick two alleys which suit you such as between second and first and right-center.
Once you have created your goals, sit down with a parent and go over them. Explain that you are trying to improve your hitting overall and that you recognize that great hitters take advantage of the whole field. What you'll need this parent to do is chart where you hit the ball. Memory is not often perfect when assessing hit spray. It is going to be important for you to have hit charts so you can measure your actual hitting against where you think you hit the ball. And once you start changing that mix, you need to measure how well you are accomplishing those goals. If you are able, after each game in which a hitting chart has been made try to write down the type of pitch and the location to match it with each at bat. See if your parent agrees with you on at least the location. It is often difficult for someone in the stands to assess the exact pitch but it is often easy for them to better judge location. Make sure you agree that your ground out to the second baseman was really on a pitch in the strike zone.
With your established goals for hitting the ball around the field, now you are ready for batting practice. Start out by using the tee and working on familiarizing yourself with how it feels to hit to the opposite field. Step forward from your typical position at the plate and start hitting the ball the opposite way. If you are hitting into a net, you may want to set up some targets to hit. It is actually quite difficult to set targets in the right place. You need to visualize the field and the proper trajectory of base hits. Then mark the net with ribbon or shoe strings. Now work on hitting those spots. The same technique works for soft toss batting practice.
Once your are on the field for live hitting practice, work on those alleys you have identified for your goals. It isn't necessary to only work those alleys. You want to maintain your current ability to hit the ball in the usual places. But you don't want to hit the ball to the opposite field just by accident or based on pitch location. Work on driving the ball hard right at the alleys you are targeting. Later once you have reassessed where the good alleys are, you may want to re-mark the places on your hitting screen where you thought those alleys were.
Hitting is largely a "feel" thing. What is important whether at the tee, on the field for practice, or in game situations is to gain the knowledge of the feel of hitting to the opposite field power alleys. You are looking to make this aspect of hitting second nature - not something you need to think about every minute of every at-bat. Once you establish your ability to hit the ball where you want it, you can begin to take advantage of the whole field. You may want to re-examine your spray mix and your goals every now and again, maybe once each season.
As a final comment on using the entire field, it is patently obvious that pitch choice and location have a great deal to say about where you hit the ball, especially as you face better and better pitchers. As you work through the exercise of examining where you hit the ball, you are going to see patterns emerge. For example, you are going to learn that you cannot hit the ball in the alley between first and second on high outside rise balls. You may find that you are able to drill through the right-center alley on outside drop balls. What we are looking for by charting your hits is knowledge. This knowledge is as important as multiplication is to algebra. You don't sit and work through multiplication tables as you are trying to solve an algebraic equation because you have committed the tables to memory. They are second nature. As you continue to assess your hit spray and match that up with pitch location and type, you will create a knowledge base in your head which is useful in very subliminal ways. You may come up in a situation where hitting the ball to the right side is important but as the pitch comes in and you identify it as a high, outside rise ball, you will be able to lay off that pitch because you know you always pop those out to the first baseman. It will be a split-second decision but because you already worked through the exercises many times, you will not need to perform calculus at the plate.
Situational Hitting
Doing the right thing at the plate in key situations is a bit tougher than using the whole field. Last time you came up was in the bottom of the sixth with nobody out, a runner on third and the game was tied. You hit a homerun, that was great situational hitting! Well, maybe that was great hitting in an age group game but what are you going to do in the state high school championship game in an identical situation with the only variation being that the pitcher has you scouted and knows you can't hit a home run on a high pitch? If you're using your brain, maybe you're going to take that high outside change-up and hit a high fly to deep right allowing your runner to score the game-winning run on your heroic sac fly!
The first assessment in situational hitting improvement is understanding what to do in situations. It is not possible to even outline all the possible situations in this already too long article. You're going to have to become a student of the game before you can understand what to do every time. But if you've already formed an understanding of what pitches give you trouble, if you've already worked on using the whole field, you're ahead of the game. Your next step is going to be to watch lots of games and have lots of conversations with coaches and others. I suggest you have conversations with a coach after every at-bat if that is possible. At least understand what they hoped you would do in a given situation. If their answer is always non-analytical, well maybe you need to talk to someone else. If they say different things in different circumstances, you've found the right person. Get into the habit of talking about your at-bats with someone "in the know." They may not always give you sound advice but at least you'll be thinking about your batting in the moment when the circumstances are still fresh.
Situational hitting analysis is maybe where taking the time to watch major league baseball can be helpful. There is just not enough softball on TV to be able to watch a game whenever you are free of other responsibilities. If softball is available, watch it. But if it is not, tune in to MLB on one of the many channels which broadcast games. The announcers are pretty good at highlighting situational hitting opportunities. Take note of them. Runner on second, nobody out, that guy should have hit a grounder to the right side but he was so intent on hitting a homerun, and the pitcher knew it, that he popped out to second and failed to move the runner over.
"Productive outs" is a term you want to familiarize yourself with. Great hitters recognize that during a typical season, they will make outs 70% of the time. Sometimes those outs will amount to nothing but if a situation arises which provides the opportunity to move runners along, they adjust their approach to take advantage of the opportunity. It is not so much that the batter tried to make an out, it is more a question of where he or she needed to hit the ball. If you're trying to move the runner from second to third, it is certainly OK to drive her in via a base hit or double up the alley in right-center. But the hitter needs to "have an idea" when she steps to the plate. If she tries to simply get a hit and her best alley is between second and third, 70% of the time she is going to ground out to short without moving the runner along. That is a "non-productive out." That is a mistake.
In order to be a smart hitter who takes advantage of situational opportunities, you will have already performed the exercises in which you gained knowledge and improved your abilities to deal with different pitches, as well as learned to hit to the entire field. I'm hoping here that among the first results of your analysis and work is that you've learned to hit a decent flyball to right on a bunch of different pitches. The single most important situational opportunity is the one to bring a runner home in a tight game. The sac fly is often under-rated by players. If you can train yourself to hit a deep enough fly every time a runner is on third with less than two outs, you will become your coach's favorite player! And remember, sac flys don't count against your batting average! They're productive not only for the team but also for the player as they increase your RBIs while not giving you a time at-bat!
Like I said earlier, there is not enough space to list every possible situation. Some of the situations you want to examine and figure an approach to early on are those in which you might hit into an inning-ending double play, ground into a fielder's choice when the batter before you reached first on a lead-off walk, or ground to the third baseman when runners are on first and second. If you know how to handle different pitches in different zones, and you can take advantage of the entire field, you will avoid making harmless outs.
Everything Else
Finally, I have offered to you my perspectives on hitting and taking it to the next level. I've covered some of the larger areas hitters can work on but there are a number of other things out there as well. Maybe I have not covered something you think is important. That's OK. You have a brain. You can work on improving yourself as hitter without any input from me, or for that matter anyone else. You might want to work on your bunting skills, take the steps necessary to be a switch hitter, or maybe even learn how to slap hit. If these things or others are important to you, give them a try. Learning new skills will never harm your established ones as long as you don't totally ignore that which has brought you to this point.
What's most important is performing self-evaluation, mapping out areas to improve, developing a plan, and then putting that plan into practice, first at the tee, then in live drills and finally during games. Remember to put your plan into some sort of writing. Then you must measure success. Success is not simply a matter of checking your batting average after every game. You want to measure how well you achieved your goals.
Conclusion
Whatever you do to improve your hitting game, remember to use your God-given brains. The pitcher is out there using hers to try to get you out. If you do not use your brains at the plate, you are handing the advantage to your opponent!Labels: hitting
 
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