Here’s a nice video clip of Justin Upton’s swing from the 2011 postseason. He crushes a 3-1 fastball to deep left field and the clip shows a couple replays from the center field and side views for a good look at his hitting mechanics (and bat flipping style!):
One of the things I like about Upton’s swing is that he generates tons of power but doesn’t have a lot of “noise”. Specifically, he doesn’t get far away from a good swing plane. Here is an illustration of what I mean, just before Upton unloads his swing:
Justin Upton swing plane
Lots of bat speed + consistent swing path = power AND consistency!
The Bratt Bat has been around for a long time and if you pay attention you can probably see one in the on-deck circle of most major league baseball teams. Although Bratt Bat’s are traditionally used as a warm-up device, I think they can also serve a purpose for learning specific areas of the swing, such as rotation and swing path. Even though these heavy weighted bats are out of the suggested range for use with standard overload-underload bat speed training, they still can be an effective tool for teaching mechanics that generate power and increased bat speed.
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.
Internet-vets have surely seen the overhead swing path video of Pete Rose, which shows a good depiction of the ‘circular’ type path of the hands. This is a game shot with Trot Nixon hitting, mirrored to show both sides of the overhead swing path from launch to contact.
