Hitting is the hardest part of the game

[whoopen]

With hitting being the hardest part of the game, why do so many coaches put this last on their list or don't spend enough time to give the reps that their players need to become tough hitters?

 

[sluggers]

Teaching hitting is very time intensive. Most coaches use 2 hour practices. By the time you get through basic defensive work, your time is gone.

Good hitters, like good pitchers, work on their own after team practice.

 

[whoopen]

In game situations the pitcher is always getting their throws in. But the hitter is lucky to get 10 swings in the whole game. So just in one game the hitter is falling way behind to keep up with the pitcher's. Then when they go to practice they don't spend enough time for hitting but the majority of pitchers still go off to the side during practice to get their throws in. So if a hitter is going to keep up with the pitching they have got to swing as many times as a pitcher throws.

 

[rowdy]

Hitting is the easiest part of the game in my opinion. You can win games with mediocre hitting, but you can't win with bad defense or bad pitching. The reason so few teams practice hitting is they don't understand the value of swings opposed to batting practice. We score a lot of runs against average teams, but the reason we beat good teams is we can defend.

Simply put, make sure you don't do things in your practice that has one or two people doing something and the rest watching. Batting practice is hard to do without a bunch of people standing around "shagging" balls.

 

[SBFAMILY]

What other sport do you fail at 2/3 of the time and get paid millions? Baseball player hitting 333.

 

[team mom]

A lot of parents think nothing of paying for music lessons or an academic tutor, yet they expect their DD to be able to hit a softball without lessons. Hitting is an extremely technical part of softball. (I had no idea just how technical until I watched a lesson.) I am guessing most coaches don't spend a lot of time on it because they don't know how to teach it. Those that do often use outdated methods or just bad form. We started private hitting lessons in the fall. My DD has gone from having the most K's on her team to being the 2nd best hitter in the Spring tournaments. This is 100% due to her lessons.

 

[SBFAMILY]

"So let’s continue the journey of doing what USA TODAY claims is the most difficult thing to do in all of sports and that is to hit a round object with a round object." A very good quote from a hitting instructor !

 

[CoachKevin]

What I typically do is practice 2 nights a week, one practice is defense, and one is offense. However when we do batting practice, the kids that are shagging are expected to field the balls at game speed. I would make an awesome 10U pitcher..lol back me up from 35 feet..not-so-much.

 

[starsnuffer]

Huge difference between teaching how to swing a bat, and how to hit. You can spend 2 hours on drills and instruction on the proper swing mechanics, but the only way to teach hitting is to get a kid in front of a pitcher. It's very time intensive to do this, as pitchers are limited so everyone has to take turns. All the better hitters either take hitting lessons, or are part of a program with dedicated hitting instruction as part of the regular schedule, outside of the few nights a week of defensive practice.

-W

 

[CoachKevin]

Totally agree with you star, I have noticed that our "local" hitting instructor just uses a machine for the lessons so during the team batting practice I want the girls seeing live pitching. Still don't know what is better tho, using our own pitchers, or just having me throw?