WebBall.com - Swing Repair Short Course

The devil is in the details.

Sometimes, minor faults can have a big impact on hitting success.

This page was inspired by 'Ask the Coach' questions over the past several years and by our own experiments with swing adjustment. As with all advice on corrections, keep it simple, and work on one fault at a time until the hitter understands and feels the difference, then move on. Initial corrections should be for contact, then work on power. See the more detailed swing repair case histories to learn how/why to work on corrections.

Fault	Description	Correction
Chopping Down	Swinging down on the ball which results in an undercut pop-up with backspin	Work on getting FRONT elbow up to get a swing through the plane of the pitchDo a progression from dry swings to soft toss to straight-in whiffles to full pitching to reinforce the adjusted swing.
Stepping in the Bucket	Pulling body away from the plate on stride step.	Start with open stance, front foot away from plate causing the need to step inReinforce this by reminder that front foot, front shoulder, and hands in sequence should all challenge the pitcher - go right at him.
Upper Cut	Using a circular golf swing rather than eliptical baseball swing	Control the swing path with an obstacleYou could use a tee with a guide track or a double tee, but a chair will work - anything to keep the hand and bat up as it drives forward before the barrel drops onto a tee at the front of the plate.
Hitting off the End	Contact always off the end of the bat could be a sign of wrist roll	Emphasize palm-up palm-down This is the hand orientation you want through the entire contact zone. One good drill is to practice with a Frisbee held upside down between the palms - it should fly off like a line drive.
Casting Out	Dropping the barrel too early in the swing while the hands are still back	Control the path during training with an obstacle.Like the problem above, this can be worked on with a guide-track tee or double tee. However most use the fence drill to teach the inside out swing. Player is position with a bat wedge between his belly and a fence. From that starting position, he takes the bat and tries a swing that doesn't hit the fence - success comes with hands to the ball first.
Swinging Over or Under	Timing and mechanics seem right but the barrell misses the ball.	Change the way the pitch is tracked.First read the page on visual perception to understand what the problem might be. The simplest adjustment is to concentrate on the ball from 10-5 feet out. To do that, the head must stay steady and turn in ahead of the pitch (jump-scan), so the eyes are refocused and tracking as the pitch nears the plate.
Missing Low Strikes	Everything is okay but the barrel just can't reach those low pitches.	Hold the bat more vertically at the launch position This has a tendancy to let the barrel head dip lower in the zone.
Missing High strikes	Everything works but the bat just can't get on top of high strikes.	Hold the barrel tilted back more at launch. This has a tendancy to keep the barrel head up in the zone, partly by forcing the front elbow up at launch.
Swing too Early	Turning hips so quickly and with so much batspeed that swing is ahead of ball arriving.	Find a technique to adjust timingOne possible approach is to narrow the focus to 10 feet in front of plate - swing late. Another approach is to have a higher leg lift to delay hip turn.
Swinging Too Late	By the time hips start and barrel is in the zone, pitches are in the mitt.	Find a technique to adjust timingRead the pitch early - focus on the 'window' beside the pitcher's head where the ball comes from. Also, shorten stride and/or stroke.
Weak Swings	This is not one problem but possibly many, it all comes down to recognizig the source of the weakness.	Look first for obvious failures... a collapsing front leg, contact on middle-in pitches that isn't out front, stiff shoulders, or a slow, lazy swing with no commitment, no bat speed.