Hitting Tips: Lunging Problem

by Matt Molinari
(Venice, Florida)

My hitting problem

is I get out in front of the ball too much.

Teaching Hitting Response: by Dave 'Skip' Holt

Correcting Hitting Tips for Lunging at the Plate

Hey Matt, Are you saying that you are pulling the ball too much or is your body itself drifting and finding yourself over striding with you weight to far forward?

If your body weight is drifting too far forward then try a hitting swing technique where you keep like 90% of your weight on you back leg. This keeps you body back and helps stop the torso from drifting forward.

Also, try widening your stance and bending your knees to keep your balance and center of gravity a little more under control. The top hitters are able to take a complete swing and maintain balance. The stance that has your feet twice the width of your shoulders will help you stay back.

Find a way to hold your balance after your swing is completed. Keep the body back and let the hands, arms and bat do the 'lunging'.

Pull the Ball or Opposite Field?
So, let us look at a few more baseball hitting tips to help with your batting problem of lunging.

We have talked about keeping the majority of your weight on you back foot. Also, we have talked about widening your stance and lowering your center of gravity. These two hitting tips should be beneficial to keep a batter from lunging.

Additional Batting Tips

1.If you are pulling the ball more than you would like or are hitting some good hard foul balls to your pull field then you may be ‘hooking’ the ball.

So far, batters get no credit for hitting the ball hard in foul territory. It may look good but all it is is a strike against you. I used to say that most hitters that hit a foul home run end up striking out during the at bat.

Check it out—it

happens more than not.

Now, I really like batters to pull the ball. That is where most players have their most power hitting—to their pull field. But, hitters want to have the ability to hit the ball to all fields some of the time.

If you play long enough you will face pitchers that will force you to hit pitches on the outside part of the plate. So, a hitter should have some kind of ability to hit the ball to the opposite field with some authority.

Maybe hitting to the opposite field without the authority and power as your pull field but some kind of production is helpful and make a hitter a tougher out.

How do you hit the ball to the opposite field? Practice, practice, practice.

2. Most really dominate top youth league hitters will overpower most pitchers that they face. The best hitters usually completely overmatch their opponents on the mound. Pulling the ball comes very easy.

The average pitchers are just not good enough to contain really good top hitters at the youth league levels.

Again, hitters can do very well at this stage of their baseball careers. But, if the best hitters continue to rise through the levels of baseball they will eventually need to be able to hit the ball to all fields.

Hitting the ball to all fields leaves very few ‘holes’ or weak spots for a pitcher to attack. Your hitting strength may always be the pull field but at least make the pitcher have to really work to get you out on the outside pitches.

You don’t want to be an automatic out if the pitcher has good sharp stuff on the outside third of the plate.

So, getting out in front of the ball, especially the fastball is a really good asset for baseball players. But, you want to have an opposite field threat in your tool bag too, when you go up against really good pitching.