No "cap"

I agree 100%. HLP is ruining hitting. It's making swingers NOT hitters. Adapting barrel paths to specific pitch locations is what the old timers did. You can't swing up (HLP) to an up fastball and expect to be 100% on-time, on the sweet spot, with your best swing more than 1 out of 25. After looking at Judge's stats on all pitches, if all he saw were up fastballs, change-ups down and in, and sliders down and away, he'd hit barely above Mendoza with 3 jacks. Rich is a con man. He's taught the same old thing for so long and has gotten lucky grabbing some of the talent he has. Why don't you ask Bellinger how well HLP teaching worked for him the last 3-4 years with the Dodgers. Poor guy couldn't hit a belt high fastball.

Good question. Perry says on an inner third pitch: contact must be 1.5 foot out front of the stride foot. I figure anywhere between 6-inches to what Perry says. It all depends on how well the hitter can control the barrel while swinging "down". The closer the ball is to the hitter, the more "down" to swing.

@@HittingPerformLab thanks. is the assumption then that the reaction time that you lose swinging more out front is offset by a faster swing speed?

@@paulkelly8428 the swing speed will be the same whether we're hitting a middle in versus middle out pitch. With zero or one strike we're hunting a zone. Depending on the zone being hunted, the barrel path (up/down) will be determined before the pitch. We're being being proactive with zero or one strike, not reactive.

Watching this again so another question, keeping the angle between the hands and bat, how do you keep from dragging the bat through the zone? I was hitting with my son and kept hitting balls off the hand side.

@@paulkelly8428 the hitter must keep control of the barrel with the top hand. We use top hand bottom three finger pressure to help with this (pinky, ring, and middle). Hitter squeezes those three fingers when he/she picks up the stride foot and squeezes hard all the way through impact into the finish. We also control the barrel by using a swing "down" feel. Especially on middle in and middle up pitches. Another term I like to use is "skip the barrel across the table without touching it." Imagine the ball is coming in on a table (could be sitting on a tee), and we want the hitter to skip the barrel across the table without the barrel dropping and bouncing off it.

Thanks for your support. Shoot...

Sadly, yes. I found out last week.

Right, it's like boating terms: pitch, yaw, and roll

My pleasure Paul

I couldn't have put it better myself Coach Masullo! I appreciate your continued support over the years my friend!

Correct

@@HittingPerformLabif his bat follows the ball at that angle, is this a little bit of an upper cut swing?

@@paulkelly8428 definitely uppercutting the plane of the pitch.

@@paulkelly8428 you bet it is.

100% There's a tumorous hitting philosophy out there that is setting hitters back decades. It's the most popular for many misguided reasons. Guys hitting the ball 110+mph can be hitting the ball 120+. Guys like Judge and Ohtani have a high hard hit rate but a poor sweet spot %. Guys like Arraez have a poor hard hit rate but a great sweet spot %. Can you have both? YES! And then there's BA, which some people hate, but it's a metric. Back in the day, we'd see 30+ guys hitting .300 by the end of the season...today? Maybe 4. What's going on? As Mark Twain once said, "If you find yourself on the side of the majority, then you must pause and reflect." Baseball and softball hitting coaches MUST pause and reflect. When these pitchers figure out @PerryHusband Effective Velocity, the hitters still doing this popular hitting philosophy will die out like the dinosaurs, or will be forced to adapt.

I hear you, but "staying back" is a relative term. It will help a hitter who lunges post stride landing. Staying back in its extreme will cause uppercutting. Lots of this being taught on KZbin. Look at Trout, Otani, Cabrera, etc...they ALL have forward movement. They're decent hitters. Addressing fast pitching today versus in the past...watch the Fastball movie documentary. Back in the day, the radar gun or any velo calculation was closer to home-plate. Nowadays they aim the radar gun out of the pitcher's hand. This is the fastest moment for a pitcher's velo. In the documentary they have a Physicist dispel this myth you're referring to. Walter Johnson (Ty Cobb era) when calculation was adjusted threw something like 93-mph. Bob Feller (Ted Williams era) when calculation was adjusted threw something like 106-mph. Nolan Ryan (70/80/90's) when calculation was adjusted threw over 107. Aroldis Chapman was at 105-mph. Two pitchers, one from the 40's and 50's AND another from the 70's through the 90's both threw faster than Chapman.

Great question, check out this blog post: hittingperformancelab.com/hitters-baseball/