Baseball Bat Plane Will Increase Your Chances of Hitting a Home Run
A regulation baseball pitching mound is 10 1/2 inches tall. If you really want to hit a home run, you have to take that into consideration. Why you ask? Well, let me ask you this, have you ever had someone tell you that you need to take a level swing when swinging the bat, or even worse, swing the baseball bat down? Think about it for a second. Imagine the path of the baseball going from the pitcher’s hand, to the catcher’s glove. Do you imagine a straight trajectory that’s maybe parallel to the ground? I think not.
Please forgive my crude drawing of a pitcher and catcher, but maybe this will help you understand, if you don’t yet, that you must swing your bat into the plane of the pitch.
In this baseball pitching “illustration” the red line is the path of the pitch, from the pitchers hand, to the catchers glove. The red, orange, and green lines, are the three batting swings that I mentioned earlier; downward level and upward.
You can see that if you swing downward with the bat, signified by the blue line, you only have one chance of hitting the ball, because your baseball bat is intersecting the pitch path at one single point illustrated by the blue dot.
If you swing your bat level, signified by the orange line, you have the same type of situation, in that your possibility of hitting the pitch is only at a single point in the path of the pitch.
But, if you swing your bat using a slight upward angle, signified by the green line, you are swinging through the path of the pitch for the maximum amount of time; therefor, giving you a greater chance to make contact, and possibly hit a home run out of the ballpark.
Your should imagine swinging to drive the baseball back up to where it came from, the pitcher’s hand, at the point of his delivery.
So, whether you want to be a contact hitter, or your dream is to hit a home run, it’s important to keep these things in mind. You can hit it out of the park with patients, practice and persistence… oh, and of course, the proper baseball bat plane. ; )
