Posted by: Chuck () on Fri Sep 30 20:09:34 2005

You know one thing I forgot to talk about when I was studying the Pete Rose clip you gave me, was the location of the pitch in relation to the swing.

I not against rotational hitting, I don't even really believe that there is really a "rotational" style and a "linear" style of hitting. Every players swing is a combination of both. It just happens that same are more rotational, and some are more linear.

We must all know that a players swing changes in relation to the location of the pitch, your swing will be different for pitches high, low, inside, and outside.

On the clip you showed me of Pete Rose, the pitch that he was hitting was outside. We all know that in order to hit an outside pitch with any power you have to let it travel farther, and make contact with it deeper in the contact zone.

Now I think it has been agreed upon that the rotational swing (circular hand path) is longer than a linear swing (straight hand path).

Because a player has to let the outside pitch travel farther, in order to hit it hard he has to find a way to keep his hands back or delay his bathead in meeting the ball. There are only three ways to do this: slow down the actual speed of the swing, wait longer before starting the swing, or purposely add more length to the swing (make the hand path longer.)

No good hitter slows his hands down to hit an outside pitch, that’s just dumb and counterproductive. There are a couple guys that I have seen who actually do wait longer to start their swings, but they always to awkward, and they always seem to almost to pull away from the ball with their bodies for some odd reason. The most logical way to handle an outside pitch is to purposely lengthen the swing, and for a lot of good hitters this happens pretty naturally. So usually on outside pitches a players swing will be more rotational and longer, to compensate for the late (farther back) contact point with the ball on the outside corner, and on an inside pitch a players swing will be more linear and shorter, to compensate for the early (out in front) contact point with the ball on the inside part of the plate.

So the clip you showed me of Pete Rose really isn’t all that big of a surprise that he appears so rotational, he is simply compensating for the late contact point of the outside pitch, by lengthening his swing a little.

Now show me a clip of him hitting an inside pitch and let’s see how circular and long his hand path is. Heck find any clip of any hitter hitting an inside pitch and you’ll notice that the hand path is straighter to the ball.