Does the concept of a “bat whisperer” seem far-fetched? I don’t think so. It appears that baseball players and coaches will migrate to anyone who’ll give advice on what they should do to improve their hitting. The main criterion that they appear to use is whether he played baseball and sometimes if he was exceptionally good in hitting.
This was brought home quite vividly in an article about a blind hitting coach who relies on his peripheral vision to see what the batter does. Even high-level players such as Tony Gwynn are among those influenced by this coach. But is this legally blind coach really any different from present day hitting coaches?
As I have brought out many times in previous blogs, the answer is a resounding no. Why? Because it is impossible to see what occurs in the main phase of the hitting action. The only thing that can be seen are the more stationary or very slow initial or ending movements.
The actions that occur in the core of the swing i.e., the power phase, in which the body develops the power that is imparted to the ball, occur too quickly for the human eye to see what occurs. In fact the actions are faster than what can even be recorded on a typical video camera.
Although you can see the movement as a whole, if you slow down or freeze frame any part of the power phase you will get a blur. And the camera is faster than the eye in relation to recording movement. Thus how is it possible for these hitting gurus to pick up any flaws in the swing pattern?
The only “errors” they can pick up are in the initial stance, the stride, and the latter part of the follow-through. However, changes in these phases of the swing are for the most part not critical. There are different ways of pushing off (striding) and for the most part it makes little difference which one is used. The same applies to the follow-through which is based on what occurs in the power phase. A change here will change the power phase.
Trying to change something in these phases of the swing usually leads to negative changes in the power of phase which creates even more problems for the batter. Fortunately most of the changes are minor and have little effect on the power phase.
If they really improved their swings we would hear comments from the “students” more to the effect of how much their batting percentage increased, how many more hits they were getting, and how much better the hits were. Instead we usually hear comments such as, ” He discovered a flaw in my pushoff and I corrected it.”, “My swing felt better” , “I never knew I was doing it”
It appears that many players are intrigued with the unknown. I feel quite confident that if someone began calling themselves the “bat whisperer” and had one or two top names to advertise, he would soon be inundated with clients. In contrast, when I tell a player that I will do a visual biomechanical analysis and show him what he does through the entire swing so that he can see his flaws if any, they don’t believe it.
For more information on what constitutes an effective swing see Build a Better Athlete.