Hanging Breaking Balls. Hit them Early!

I've heard over and over hitting coaches tell their players to hunt the fastball and lay off the curve ball. However, good pitchers are good because they can locate their fast ball consistently. Especially with the college and high school pitcher they will try to throw their fastball down and away. They will not execute every time but that is their comfort zone. Some will also come in off the plate. This pitch is effective because hitters are taught to look away and react in so they don't have time to react to a pitch in when they are looking away. However, the point of this post is to talk about off speed pitches. To reiterate good pitcher are comfortable throwing their fastball down and away. That's not a pitch you want to hit as a hitter. However, the other comfort pitch for pitchers is the breaking ball (most pitchers) and every once in a while the change up (amateur pitchers don't have a feel for this pitch for the most part). Early in games the starting pitcher has the luxury to throw their off speed pitch of choice in the middle of the plate and hitters are encouraged to take it!!! As the game goes along the pitcher will get a better feel for his off speed pitch and the pitch will get better. The pitch to hit early in the game is not the fastball its the off speed pitch. Hitters should look for it! It is taboo in most hitting philosophies to look for off speed because taking a fastball in the middle of the plate is a cardinal sign. why? I encourage you to sit on off speed pitches early in games. Especially 0-0 (even more with runners in scoring position) and 0-1 after a fastball strike. Set your timing up knowing a slower pitch is coming and know its coming until the ball shows you its not that pitch. The key to hitting the get me over off speed pitch is you want it to end up above the knees and you want to let it travel. You also want to match the plane of the incoming especially breaking ball with an uppercut swing. Have you ever done a curve ball round during batting practice or hit curveballs of a pitching machine during practice. It's not that hard to crush those breaking balls when they are in the zone. WHY? Because you know its coming! Well in the game look for it in certain counts and situations and you can crush it. Because of the spin of a breaking ball if you match plane with your body and bat path the ball goes a long way when you hit it on the barrel. Watch the big league hitters. You can tell even when they don't hit the off speed pitch well that they were looking for it on certain pitches. Hitting approach is something that needs to be talked about more. Start with this simple adjustment and watch how many hanging breaking balls you get to hit especially early in the game off the starting pitcher. One thing Josh Donaldson does with his approach is when he has decided to take prior to a pitch he will take as long as the pitcher doesn't throw him a get me over curveball if they do even when he has decided to take he will swing at it and he hit 6 homeruns last year on hanging breaking balls that he had pre-determined as a take pitch. It works! Try it. Below are all still pictures of big league hitters hitting home runs on off speed pitches. Notice how they set their body up to match plane with the pitch. Big league hitters hit homeruns on off speed pitches every night. They hunt them in certain counts based on pitchers patterns. In the next post we will talk about how you can still hit homeruns on off speed pitches even when you are looking fastball if you set your body up right to adjust to the change in speed and trajectory of the off speed pitch compared to the fastball.