If you know me, you know Manny Ramirez is my favorite hitter. These days, Miguel Cabrera has been catching my attention. I really like how he starts his swing. Simple, efficient and powerful. If he keeps it up, he could be the next Manny (not only in terms of production but also my favorite hitter!) The following link is some video I took of his batting practice a couple of weeks ago:
Miguel Cabrera Batting Practice Video
It made me look at his swing a little bit closer. I have several of his HR clips from the front and side views and I’m noticing that he seems to make contact much closer to full extension than most. And he does it fairly consistently.
You can draw your own conclusion, but this observation reminds me of several HR clips I have where players hit the ball out of the park when they are fooled, reaching, out in front (whatever you want to call it). And it all gets back to the issue of using the body to create bat speed early and keeping the arms/hands connected so you have a chance to transfer that energy as the swing progresses.
As an aside here, this clip I made of Delgado is a good illustration of what’s going on:
http://swingtraining.net/clips/delgado-oppo-hrs.mpg
Both HR’s except on the left he is “reaching” or hitting it “one-handed” as the announcers would say. But if you go frame by frame right up until contact, the swings are virtually identical.
I hear a lot of folks say you have to have such strong hands to do what Delgado is doing on the left. I’d say, when you are reaching that much, your hands and arms are in a much worse position to exert strength. In other words, the further the arms get from the body, the less they are able to apply force in the swing. It would make sense to me that Delgado on the left is relying much more on the energy he built up BEFORE he let his bat go out to make contact. Which would also explain why players are typically able to pull the ball with more power compared to hitting to the opposite field.
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