Livestrong.com has a surprising amount of credible articles about baseball training and exercises. For our high school hitter focus, this week, we will look at an article published by Steve Silverman entitled How To Train Your Eye Better To Hit the Baseball. Despite the glaring grammatical errors present in his title, the article contains three tips to help improve performance in the batters box; two of the tips you may have hear of, and one of the tips you probably have not hear of—I know I haven’t heard of it.
The drill in question—the one I have not heard of—requires the use of two baseballs: one regular and one painted orange. The drill also requires a partner. Between you and your partner, orient yourselves in the normal fashion you would when you do ‘soft toss’ drills. The partner will toss both balls simultaneously towards the batter, and as she/he tosses the ball he will say “white” or “orange.” The hitter will hit the ball that the tosser has called out, and while the drill works on swing mechanics it will also work on the batters concentration at the plate.
The second and third drills are probably the drills that you, as a baseball follower, have heard of. The second drill really isn’t a drill at all, and should be what each batter tries to accomplish every time they go to the plate; hit the ball where it is pitched. The drill describes a pitcher throwing the ball to a hitter: three pitches on the outer half of the plate, three pitches on the middle of the plate, and three pitches on the inner half of the plate. The batters goal is to hit the ball in the direction it came from. All told, there really isn’t anything revolutionary or creative here. The third drill requires the use of a broom handle and bottle caps. If you have been around base baseball for any intermittent period of time, you can tell where I’m going. If not, you can read the article from where I linked it above.
While I do like the first drill that Steve Silverman prescribes, the second and third drills that he suggests are not very revolutionary.
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