Who is teaching the "elite" swing to MLB players?

[Maxx]

Before joinging this site, I had heard about "rotational" hitting and the philosophies of Williams, Epstein, and Schmidt. I had never heard of guys like Englishbey, Nyman, Dixon, etc.

It seems that most MLB teams have a hitting coach who was a former player that hit pretty well in his day. Are these hitting coaches that are former players the ones teaching the elite swing to the players? Are MLB players talking to guys like Englishbey, Nyman, Dixon, or is their work more research based?

If MLB players have the swing that should be emulated, who is teaching that swing to them??

By the way, I mean no disrespect whatsever to anyone I named in this post.

[Jake Patterson]

Before joinging this site, I had heard about "rotational" hitting and the philosophies of Williams, Epstein, and Schmidt. I had never heard of guys like Englishbey, Nyman, Dixon, etc.

It seems that most MLB teams have a hitting coach who was a former player that hit pretty well in his day. Are these hitting coaches that are former players the ones teaching the elite swing to the players? Are MLB players talking to guys like Englishbey, Nyman, Dixon, or is their work more research based?

If MLB players have the swing that should be emulated, who is teaching that swing to them??

By the way, I mean no disrespect whatsever to anyone I named in this post.
The few guys I know put as much into learning, developing and testing theories and techniques as the ones we hear about here. Every Major League franchise has several guys who specialize in hitting. Each of their Minor league affiliates also have people. Most were ex-pros who took a liking to the art of hitting. Two of the guys I know - Andy Walker of America's Game and Roger LaFrancois (Former Red Sox) of the SF Giants organization put hours upon hours in studying analyzing and learning the art of hitting.

We hear of the ones mentioned above here because they are favorites of people who frequent BBF, but there are hundreds out there.

As far as teaching the MLB players how to hit.... I think it's more a matter of adjusting what they already know.

[Mark H]

They have gotten to where they are now because they have, by definition, the most effective swings in the world. How they got there is interesting but the main thing is, they are there and they are what they are. Emulate them.

As far as how, each of them has had innumerable coaches over the years. It could be argued that many of them are there because they did not let each of these coaches jerk them this way and that. Maybe they are lucky that they stumbled on the best way to swing or maybe they are just geniuses at solving athletic motion problems or maybe they had great hitters around them to emulate at a young age like Griffey Jr and Bonds for instance. I suppose it would be a case by case question. But if Joe MLB hitting coach comes up and says "swing this way" I expect they are going to be very skeptical of changing something that got them that far.

[Chris O'Leary]

They have gotten to where they are now because they have, by definition, the most effective swings in the world.

I completely agree.

It's not based on the arguments of the hitting gurus.

Instead, it's a process of natural selection, which is brutally honest. They survive because they have the swing that works (and it tends to be the same swing). The guys who don't have that swing don't survive (or don't make it up).

The job of the hitting instructor then becomes...

1. Not screwing them up.
2. Getting them back to the swing when they are in a slump.

Of course, I imagine that there are a few examples out there of guys who came up with the swing, for some reason changed things, and then got "helped" all the way out of the big leagues.

[tom.guerry]

mother nature + necessity, if coach does not get in way

[wheelhouse]

DD,

I don’t know the answer to your question but I do know it sure as hell was not Englishbey, Nyman, or Dixon. If you read many Baseball Hitting Boards, you see the same usual suspects dominating the Forums. Al Gore made them famous by inventing the Internet…. because without it you would have never heard of (any) of them.

While reading all the Boards on the Net will never get you an MLB Swing, I do find Teacherman extremely entertaining.

I think Chris’s answer is very close to the truth.

[virg]

DD,

I don’t know the answer to your question but I do know it sure as hell was not Englishbey, Nyman, or Dixon. If you read many Baseball Hitting Boards, you see the same usual suspects dominating the Forums.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx bingo!

[4for4]

mother nature + necessity, if coach does not get in way

I think that's what Mark was getting at. Aren't you that newbie from Eteamz. Look, it's alright to be a newbie, but try not to flaunt it.

[GFK]

I having nothing to base this on but some loose research and reading and intuition.

I suspect many of the great hitters are taught thru emulation. They get good mental video clips of great hitters stored away in their brain at an early age.

The kids who never see an MLB swing or pitch but show up for rec ball see all the other rec ball swings and pitches. This becomes their mental video for emulation purposes.

It is for this reason that I will not let my kids see my swing. (It sucks!) They do watch clips at the breakfast table. If the clips are not running they just read the cereal boxes.

Once the good image is in their brain, they have to be able to filter out all the instructional garbage they receive along the way. It is sort of like picking nickles out of cow plop. They are going to have to wade thru alot of instructional crap to get a few good nugets of instruction.

[cartersball]

picking nickles out of cow plop

LOL, thats a new analogy! One I can see being used all over these boards soon.

[CoachZee]

I'm a die hard Yankee fan and read the NY papers daily to get the latest. I do know that when A-Rod was slumping, Don Mattingly was telling him he was hitting the ball too far out in front, which I translated to mean disconnection.

The same thing happened when Bobby Abreau came over. He credited Mattingly with helping him with his swing because he was too far out in front. I'm sure this was over simplifying things but again...disconnection.

Maybe it wasn't Englishbey but it seems like Mattingly is teaching some of the same stuff. He is known to be student of hitting and they all go over video to analyze swings.

There was an article earlier this summer about how MLB players were having their hitting coaches upload tapes of their swings to their I-Pods (no relation to A-Rod).

Don Slaught from Right View Pro (Candrea/Enquist tape) fame is now the Tigers hitting coach. Even if you don't agree with all of his teachings there is some common ground to the teachings of others.

Hiddengem, a regular contributor on BBF here has stated that in the minors, you get some good coaches and some they don't pay attention to. So on the minor league level there seems to be some inconsistency to the instruction.

The bottom line to my point is there seems to be some agreement on what the swing should look like but different hitting coaches see things differently and how you should get there. Probably the same differences you see in the teachings from Englishbey to Slaught to Esptein and Mankin.

Personally, I feel Englishbey is the closest to what I perceive as teaching the MLB swing but others see it differently.

[Ursa Major]

I think part of the "revolution" we've seen in hitting instruction over the past twenty five years has come about because Prof. Adair's famous study showed that hitters' rotation (and not their arms and hands) had to the most impact on bat speed, and others like Mike Epstein voiced what probably was in a lot of players' heads: Why don't we teach what we see?

The explanation often given for the fact that top hitters' swings departed from the language used in instructing them (and when they were instructing others [see Dusty Bakers' site to see what I mean]), is exactly what many have speculated here: that professional hitters learn by emulating and talking with others who have success. Any many are surprisingly inarticulate about what it is that goes into their basic hitting style.

My guess is that top level athletes often have a very developed musculature and body feedback system that moves them up the "learning curve" instinctively and quickly. The rest of us have to break it into smaller parts and come up with techniques to overcome the lack of natural ability to, say rotate well. Add to the fact that they take many thousands of more swings at high level pitching than we do, so they have more opportunity to discover what works for them and to incorporate the components of the successful experiments into their swings.

Many hitting coaches such as Steve E. talk about the importance of getting "slop" out of swings, so that everything that occurs once the "go" trigger is pressed in the hitters' brain leads to an efficient and accurate movement of the bathead. Hitters facing 95 MPH heat have to do that or they will fall by the way side. This naturally leads to hitters' "discovering" that getting the bat into swing plane at launch is critical, for example.

I have heard of few hitting coaches after Lau being credited with making major changes in successful hitters' swings once they've reached the major leagues. Rather, they are largely there to detect changes in the swings that may have caused a fall-off in production. Or they may suggest how a minor change in technique -- e.g., where to try to make contact -- might bring about improvement. They can change the wheels and maybe the exhaust system, but the owner rarely will let 'em suggest dropping in a new engine, so to speak.

HiddenGem did have some interesting thoughts on hitting coaches at the levels at which he's played. I couldn't find it off hand though.

[Chameleon]

Are they talking about the high level swing here?

http://www.freeboards.net/?mforum=HitZone

[bbjunkie]

I think that historically the great hitters were largely self taught. More recently with the newer technologies available people like Nyman were able to break down high level swings through video taping and apply physics to what they saw. The most biomechanically efficient swings are the high level swings we see in the mlb. People like Englishbey have learned those lessons and are passing them on to others who truly want to understand what a great swing looks like. I particularly enjoy those stop action shots taken at the point of contact with hitters like Jeter, Pujols, Arod and Sheffield. They are text book.

[CoachZee]

I just remembered a part of Sparky Lyle's book, the Bronx Zoo, which was a diary of the Yankees 1978 season. In it he talks about Lou Pinella learning to hit with his legs rather than his arms and went on a torid hitting streak. It doesn't say who he was talking to or who taught him. I know Chris Chambliss was on the team who later became a hitting coach for the Yankees and other teams.

Currently Rob Thomson is one of their coaches and a former Mets hitting coach. He has a book from Human Kinetics that is as close to PCR as any information from MLB coach as any I've seen. A-Rod in the SI article says Rob was one of the top three people to help him with his swing during his slump.

[Maxx]

CoachZee, do you know the name of the book? I looked on Human Kinetics web site, and there wasn't any listings by that author.

[CoachZee]

CoachZee, do you know the name of the book? I looked on Human Kinetics web site, and there wasn't any listings by that author.

Maybe its because the authors name is Tom Robson

http://humankinetics.com/products/showproduct.cfm?isbn=073603336X

I'm just getting old or worse :crazy :crazy

Rob Thomson is a special assistant for the Yankees and just filled in as 3rd base coach for a couple of day. Just got them mixed up.

If you are going to start spending money on hitting, get Englishbey's DVD rather than the book. Robson's book leaves you a little empty on the details. Steve's DVD gives you all you need in order to teach it. It also gives you access to his web site forum which is worth the price of the DVD by itself.