SABERCOACH BASEBALL
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Tanner Rempel
Tanner, you can flat out hit, you’re a gifted athlete and you will hit just fine if you don’t change a thing with your swing, but I know you can get better. I don’t want you being satisfied with where you’re at right now, I want you to improve so when you take that next step into college you are ready for it. The area you can improve is being able to adjust to off-speed pitches. You are good enough at it at the high school level but as you move on pitches stuff is only going to get better and you may struggle with adjusting to them. A concept I want you to think about is never letting your hands stop moving. When I watch your swing I see your hands being stuck for a very long time. There is a thing in swing mechanics called “Matching”. What matching is, is what ever your leg does your hands do. You have a big leg kick which I love, but while your leg is working your hands to very little. You use to talk about wanting to hit like Donaldson and here is your chance. Watch in Donaldson’s swing as he brings his leg up his hands work down , and as his leg works down his hands work up into his load.
In his load his shoulder/elbow are moving his hands, you can see his elbow work up and then down. In your swing their isn’t much of this happening at all. What I want you to think about is when you load is loading your rear elbow backwards, here is a great shot of JD from overhead:
See how his elbow pulls backwards which brings his hands back behind his shoulder, which results in a much shorter, more powerful swing.
Now what will help your adjust to offspeed pitches is your front leg. Right now when you face an offspeed pitch you do not change anything with your front leg, you get your foot down and drift your upper body forward and throw your hands at it. This is a very high level thing but there is no harm in trying to learn it. There are a couple things we can do with the front leg to adjust to different speeds. One you can sit offspeed which means you will just start your swing later, two, when your foot is in the air you can slow down your leg once you recognize the pitch or three, we can extend our stride. As your foot is coming to the ground you basically want to stride further which will delay your foot hitting the ground and allow you to “stay back” on the pitch. Watch Donaldson do this below:
