How Coach Bass Teaches Hitting

The purpose of hitting is to swing to hit the ball. Try to make hard contact. When you swing with purpose, you get the barrel to the ball with the back hand. That is the main purpose.

Before the hitter attacks the ball, the hands need to be in a comfortable position where they are relaxed. There is no one required hand position — different hitters can begin with their hands in different places.

The hitter needs to get the hands to the same location when starting the load — a repeatable starting location for THIS hitter, not a universal position. The load is nothing big. A little coil back from the shoulders, and then throw the knob. The hands stay in place — the shoulders create the load. You are actually loading with the pitcher as he is winding up, and you can never load too early.

The bottom/front hand pulls the knob as hard as the hitter can, throwing the knob to the ball. Once that action begins, the front hand and the knob do not stop — they stay in constant, fluid movement through extension and the follow-through.

The back hand throws the barrel of the bat straight to the ball and through the ball. If the ball was a nail and the bat was a hammer, you are throwing the barrel head to the ball. At contact the back arm is bent — like the arm position before throwing an uppercut — and extension comes AFTER contact, with the ball on the barrel as the back hand throws the barrel through it.

People call it pulling off the ball. Coach Bass looks at where the momentum of the body goes instead. The front shoulder should be attacking the ball: when the hitter starts the swing, the front shoulder goes toward the ball. Right-handed hitter: momentum goes toward the second baseman. Left-handed hitter: momentum goes toward the shortstop.

Coach Bass's three attack points: inside — inside front knee; middle — belly button; outside — inside back knee. The ball is in front of the hitter at all three. Let the ball get deep in the zone instead of going out to get the pitch. There is no such thing as a roll over in hitting — that pattern just means the hitter did not let the ball get deep and went out to get it.

Focus on middle and away. React on an inside pitch. When a hitter gets in the box, he has to be looking for a pitch in a location he can drive. Once a hitter gets two strikes, he's looking to put the ball in play. If you look fastball, attack fastball — and when you are looking for a certain pitch and you get it, you cannot miss it.