Pro Guys Still Finding Their Way. . .

Over the past three seasons, I have done video analysis with Jim Adduci. This past season, Jim was the MVP of the Florida State League Champion Daytona Cubs (Cubs High A affiliate). Jimmy's father is a former big league player and colleague of mine. They have worked hard every off-season in polishing Jimmy's mechanics. A big concern of Jimmy has been laying his hands off (losing his proper launch angle) as he begins rotation. We have compared clips I have of Jimmy from the last three off-seasons and seen drastic improvement. Where before, his hands were getting outside his back elbow, dragging behind, he is now staying connected which has increased his barrel whip. There are two points that all hitters, amateur and professional can get from this:

1) Video analysis is a must in finding a hitter's mechanical needs. There is so much the human eye cannot pick-up that Digital Motion Analysis can find. It is something we have used over and over with Jimmy that has helped him. It has also helped Jimmy's confidence when he sees his hard work paying off, by noticing his improvement.

2) For amateur hitters, understand that pro guys are still learning and finding their way. Nobody knows everything there is to know about the swing, or baseball in general. We learn by talking the game, swing mechanics, approach, etc. Many times younger hitters fall into two camps: Those who lack confidence and feel they are never going to have a high level swing and those who think they have it figured out because they have had success against marginal competition. Both of these types of hitters will fail.

The correct approach is to learn your own swing tendencies and faults, understand mechanical corrections and drill that can help you with this, and be patient in the learning process. Adjustments are difficult and don't always feel right at first. This is why they're called "adjustments." But, show me the group of hitters that fails to make the constant minor adjustments and I'll tell you that that group is not going to have consistent success and their career's will be short lived. It's an old cliche', but learning the swing is definitely a marathon, not a sprint. Adjustments take thousands of repetitions and constant maintenance. Those hitters that are willing to put the time in, like Jim Adduci, have a great chance to reach their ultimate goal of becoming a big league baseball player.