Here’s a short video from Jr. Dodgers Coaches Corner featuring Los Angeles Dodgers’ hitting coach Don Mattingly. He’s explaining his take on hitting and swing mechanics, especially for youth and little league players.
The Front Toss Drill
As I’ve stated before, I always enjoy listening to other coaches, especially those with such a great amount of experience, because I learn things regardless of how much I agree or disagree. One of the main points from this video that I like is the emphasis of direction in a straight line back to the pitcher. It seems like a minor detail, but that’s why it often gets overlooked and leads to problems. Tee work and front toss (the soft toss show in the video) are simple drills to work on this, and are probably the most common things you’d see if you hang around the batting cage at any pro ballpark.
In my post about Sports Motion video software, I mentioned that I travelled to Europe to speak at the European Baseball Coaches Association (EBCA) Convention. It was held in Vienna, Austria in December of last year, so it’s about time I made an official update about it.
The convention is sponsored in part by International Sports Group, and I was invited to speak by ISG team leader and fellow presenter, Tom O’Connell. Each year, ISG helps organize and carry out a full roster of international conferences, and going on the trip was a great experience.
Back in the summer of 2006 there was a college player I worked with a handfull of times after he played his freshman season at a very competitive Division 1 program (they won their conference this year and competed in the NCAA baseball tournament).
We mainly did some video review and worked on mechanics as I tried to give him the information I thought he needed to put things together and make the most of his talent. I received this text message at the end of this May:
This is P***** P***** from **U. Just played my last game and wanted to thank you for working with me. You turned my career around. This year I hit .365 with 11 HR and 51 RBI. Thanks.
What follows below is information I first wrote in January 2006. I’m reposting it because I want to have the info on the ‘new’ version of the site (rather than just the old link) and also because it’s pretty good stuff.
There’s a video clip to show the progression, and the text details a number of things:
New York Yankees’ shortstop, Derek Jeter, is well known for his ability to stay “inside” the ball. This video gives his quick explanation on what he does with his swing to handle the inside pitch:
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