The Role of the Hands in Hitting a Baseball or Softball

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The Role of the Hands in Hitting a Baseball

In my opinion there is a lot of silly things said about the hands in their relation to hitting a baseball. He has "really quick hands", or "just throw your hands at the ball", are some of the statements offered up as commentary or instruction.

I want to focus here on the alignment of the hands and the positon of the hands during a swing of the bat at the plate.

The knuckles

Since the fingers contain three different knuckles, wh need give the knuckles each a name for clairity of description. So the knucles on the hand are:

The door knocking knuckles (middle)

The punching knuckles ("top")

(the first knuckles) (closest to fingertips)

How you align the knuckles can either lock up your swing, or help the bat swing more freely and with better control.

Locking up

If you line up the punching knuckles on both hands, you will find that you lock up the ability to use your wrists in swinging the bat. In doing so, you lose control and in most cases, you will lose power too.

The best position

Many will tell you to line up the door knocking knuckles, while I don’t have a problem with that alighnment, but I think it is too much for some. I prefer the top hand door knocking knuckles to line up midway between the door knockers and the punch knuckles on the lower hand, or the top door knockers to line up with the punch knuckles of the lower hand.

The Hands

The position of the hands during a swing can either help or harm a swing too. Let's review hand postion and movement below.

Pulling the hands forward

In the classic linear hitting method the hands move forward as the knob of the bat is pulled toward the pitcher. If the hitter is trying to hit the ball “inside out”, this is fine. I actually don’t mind the inside out swing with two strikes. It does keep you (obviously) from pulling off the ball, since you can’t pull a ball hitting the inside part of the ball.

If the hitter is hitting with less than two strikes, I think a good rotational hitting approach is best for most hitters. Rotational hitting will allow the hitter to hit with more power and authority. The hand path of the rotational hitter is not linear (pulling hands toward the pitcher), but circular. See how to hit with authority by using a circular hand path and a rotational hitting approach : The Final Arc DVD.

Some view the inside out swing as “push” hitting, and rotational hitting (particularly when hitting to the hitter’s “strong” field as opposed to the “opposite” field) as “pull” hitting.

Height of the hands

I like the hands somewhere near the back shoulder when the batter is loaded and ready to pull the trigger on the swing. Hands can be high while in the stance waiting for the pitcher to begin his wind up. Hands can be far from the body too, if the batter likes that. When the hitter comes to the load position, the hands should be in and back - somewhere near the back shoulder.

Dropping the hands

This is the classic “hitch” position. Some hitters can get away with it, most do not. A hitch creates an upper cut. It takes you out of the plane of the pitched ball. You are usually coming at the ball from a gross upward angle.

Some hitch and then bring the hands back up. This is kind of a timing hitch. With this hitch, the hands are starting at the “up’ position, so it is not a real big problem. What I don’t like about this type of hitch, is that the more pre-swing movement, the more than can go wrong with your timing. The longer the stride, the more problems with timing. The more pre-swing movement, the easier it is to get caught “off time“.

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