When players on baseball teams have difficulty getting hits to win games the hitting coach typically gets fired. This is understandable given the typical baseball mentality. It is believed that the hitting coach is responsible for players not doing well when it comes to hitting the ball.
This however, is far from the truth. The reason for this is that baseball hitting coaches do not have the background or knowledge to improve the player’s physical and technical ability to hit the ball. They may be very good for the strategical and personal aspects of gameplay, but not for the mechanical and physical aspects.
To improve the player’s ability to hit the ball requires the services of a specialist who has a strong background in what is involved in hitting and how it can be improved. They must have the ability to analyze what the player is doing in the swing and then understand if it is effective and if not, how it can be improved.
For example, is he breaking his wrist too soon or too late? Is the wrist break too slow (not sufficiently explosive)? Is he maximizing his shoulder rotation? Is he shifting and maintaining his weight forward? Is he swinging on an upward plane? Is he getting full extension of the arms in ample time? Does he complete the shoulder turn before the arm extension?
The coach can have an answer to these questions only if he has a strong understanding of what takes place in the swing. But even being able to analyze what is wrong does not mean it is now corrected. Telling the athlete what must be done does not guarantee that the athlete comprehends what he must do in order to make the necessary changes.
The specialist should have the knowledge and ability to show and explain what must be done to make the swing more productive. He must know which specialized strength exercises must be prescribed so that the athlete can develop the ability to make the necessary changes and to develop a feel for the action.
Understand that a specialized strength exercise duplicates the neuromuscular pathway that must be established (or reestablished) so that the strength is developed in the same range of motion as it is exhibited in the specific joint action that is being worked on. This takes a high-level of expertise.
An obstacle to implementing something of this nature in baseball is that most coaches do not believe that a player’s performance can be improved. They believe it is all in genetics and that the player either has it or he doesn’t. Because of this mindset they refuse to look at anything different from providing an opportunity for the athlete to make the changes on their own. But as we can see, this is very inefficient and in most cases very costly.
Many coaches also do not believe that such changes can be made to not only get a player out of a slump but to improve his performance. But I have been doing this for many years with great success with mostly high school and collegiate players. Most professional baseball coaches refuse to believe this even when they see one of their athletes improve in this manner.
Moneyball, which is what most teams seem to be incorporating, does not lead to better hitting or playing. Simply looking at the statistics shows that batting averages in MLB have gone down at least 10 points in the last 10 years. As more teams incorporate moneyball, the batting averages go down even more. But yet this is the trend!
See Build a Better Athlete for more information.