Hit hard line drives and fly balls. The opposite is taught at the high school and college level. "Put the ball in play" "Put pressure on the defense" "Just make contact" A weak ground ball is praised and a strike out is shunned. A lot of big league pitchers make a living as a pitch to contact, ground ball specialist. When you hit the ball on the ground with a man on first it can turn into a double play. With a man on third and less then two outs a ball in the outfield alway works. At the high school and college level the best defenders usually play in the infield. Get the ball in the outfield. There are only 3 guys out there and way more room for balls to land safely. This mindset also creates good "swing path" and allows the hitter to let the ball travel more. (will go into the mechanical advantages of this mentality in the next post)
In Ted Williams' book "the Science of Hitting" he says, "hit the ball hard and hit it in the air" He also talks about a slight uppercut swing as the ideal swing to match plane with a ball coming from an elevated mound. Kris Bryant, the National League rookie of the year made a similar quote, " “I liked hitting home runs when I was little,” Kris said. “To do that, you have to hit the ball in the air, so that’s why I caught on pretty quick to the idea of hit it high and hard. When I got to high school and college, where you begin learning about angles and stuff, it started to get easier. But I have always had that swing, in terms of a slight uppercut, so I guess I got it pretty young.” (I will talk about those angles in a future post)
In Kris Bryant's senior season at University of San Diego he hit 31 home runs; which was more than 221 Division 1 baseball teams hit for the entire 2013 season. Kris Bryant is 6'5'' but I believe height is irrelevant to power. Hank Aaron was 6 feet tall and Willie Mays was 5'11''. Power comes down to swing path, timing and seeing the ball well. Kris Bryant says, " I need to do what I need to do to be on time and see the ball as clearly as possible."
My last few posts have been about getting to a lower position to swing from. Being in a lower sitting position at landing allows you to attack pitches with a slight uppercut because the swing does not have to be as steep to the slight upper cut as it would be from a higher landing position. In the two clips below focus on his shoulders. The back shoulder goes down to the height of the pitch. The first two clips are balls up in the zone and the back shoulder still goes down. The last clips the ball is lower which adds more down in the back shoulder to contact. This movement creates a swing that has lift but doesn't make the swing long which is what many would say about the upper cut. Two final thoughts for today: 1) Work on this in the cage, once you are fully loose swing hard in the cage trying to hit hard high line drives. Most hitters never find out how hard they can swing and still be accurate with their barrel. 2) Even in the cage swing at balls you can hit on the barrel and drive to the outfield and lay off of pitches tossed/thrown to you that are above your belly button. Pitchers don't pitch above the top of the zone very often and when they do its by accident or a high waste fastball that should be a take. Pitchers try to throw both fastballs and off speed pitches down in the zone. Develop a swing where you can drive those pitches and also develop a swing that limits your ability to hit balls at your letters, its not a strike. As hitters until we get two strikes our goal is to only swing at balls we can drive to the outfield. The pitches we lay off of are just as important as the pitches we swing at. There are a lot of pitches that we make contact on in a game that if you had just taken that pitch on the corner you might of got the next pitch in the middle of the plate to drive. 
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