In sports such as tennis and other racquet sports, you can hit the ball to direct it to a particular spot or area. But can you also do this in baseball? If we take the comments made by many hitting coaches seriously, the answer would be yes.
However, according to Tony Gwynn, one of the best hitters in recent times, this may not be possible. According to him, “You just see the ball, hit the ball. If it’s in the zone you put a good swing on it and see what happens.” This implies that you have no control over where the ball goes.
I am inclined to agree with Tony although on the highest levels it should be possible to direct the ball where you want. When I say highest levels I mean players who have outstanding abilities to make highly accurate contact with the ball. There are very few such players in MLB.
In contrast to what Gwynn says, coaches continually preach to the players to hit level, grounders, line drives, or to hit down and so on. Do such recommendations aid a player in making good contact or is it a further distraction? I’m tempted to go with the latter result.
It would be interesting to take a poll of professional and minor-league ballplayers to determine if they think of where they want to hit the ball prior to a pitch coming or during the pitch delivery. I would not be surprised if the answer was something like “just concentrating to see the ball and to make contact”. This is analogous to what Gwynn stated above.
But since MLB is not into the science of the game I doubt if we’ll ever see studies of this nature done — at least in the near future. But yet it is studies like this that can make a world of difference in improving the player’s ability to make good contact and have more hits, including home runs.
For more information on what it takes to develop a high-level player see Build a Better Athlete