How to hit a curveball. Today, I share with you the secret to crushing curveballs.
ok so let's jump into it...as you get older, you understand that there are good curveballs, and their are bad curveballs.
and your job as a hitter is to hit the bad curveballs and not swing at the good curveballs.
So what is a good curveball?
well a good curveball is the one that is down in the zone. it's a pitchers pitch. it's a pitch where you are going to swing over it. or. its a pitch where you can't do much with it.
you might be able to slap it for a hit - a soft single but more times than not, it's an out.
It's also exactly what I'm going to show you right now from my eyes in an actual professional live at bat.
now, lets see from another angle. some very good curveballs at the MLB level.
So now what is a "Bad" curveball?
A bad curveball is the one that is "up in the zone", "hangs", the one that you will your teammate...his curveball sucks. "the one where you are not looking for it and still are able to crush it because it's just sitting there, like its sitting on a tee. it's the one where your eyes light up, and you see it as big as a beach ball.
the reason I bring that quick little story up is because that's a bad curveball...meaning, where you don't need to be looking for it...and naturally, you still are able to crush it.
and again, I'm going to share with you a view from my eyes in an actual professional live at bat.
now, lets look at some bad curveballs that got absolutely demolished.
ahhh....that's so satisfying. Seeing bad curveballs getting crushed. As you can see, all curveballs are not created equal.
so now that we see a difference between the 2, how can we focus on crushing the bad curveballs and laying off the good cruveballs?
because we really want to hit the bad curveballs....since they are the mistakes.
when you get a good curveball, you want to take it unless it is 2 strikes. then, you will need to battle.
so to answer the question on how to actually crush bad curveballs?
So the easiest and most simplest way to crush bad curveballs is to set your sights, or approach, higher in the strike zone. to be a little more detailed, I mean setting your sights on fastballs up in the zone. if you do this, you will naturally stay back and not be fooled.
For example, if you set your sights, or approach, for a fastball low in zone, wouldn't you agree that if they threw a curveball that is on the same plane as that fastball, it would be hard to pick up, and or hit?
now, wouldn't you agree that if you set your sights, or approach, for a fastball at the top of the strike zone, and the pitcher threw a curveball on that same plane, as a fastball up, that you would be able to hit that curveball much easier than the one that is low?
See, if you set your approach higher in the strike zone, you are going to naturally take the fb low in the zone because you aren't going to be looking for it. the benefit of this is that if the pitcher throws a curveball low, you will take it.
this means you are going to be taking the good curveballs and get in more hitters counts because at your level, You... who are watching this video, the pitchers are taught to throw down in the zone.
this also means that since you are taking the good curveballs you will set yourself up for crushing the bad curveballs which are up in the zone.
So as you can see, we want to hit the bad curveballs...the one that sucks. the hanger. the one that is up in the zone.
now, guys like Mike Trout are the exception. but for actual humans, looking up in the zone will seriously help you to dominate the curveballs.
So a few drills you can do that I did before a game, is when you hit off a machine set the machine on curveballs up in the zone. The hangers. I would bunt the 1st 25 balls. but I would only bunt the hangers, just to train my eyes to see the hanger. If it was a low curveball, I wouldn't bunt it. most machines throw low curveballs.
the next round, I would do the exact same but I would hit the ball. so I would hammer the curveballs up in the zone and take the 1 down.
Now, lets say you don't have a pitching machine. I would have someone throw curveballs up in the zone.... and do the same thing where you bunt the 1st 25 and take all bad ones...then hit the next 25 that are up in the zone.
when you do this, don't just hit it. drive it.. drive it in the gaps, or even hit it out the park. the bad curveballs are meant to be demolished.
What you are going to notice is that you will naturally stay back on the ball. and it will feel easy...and you will train your eyes to hit the mistake - the bad curveball.
and this will translate over into the game.