Yo!
What’s going on guys?
I want to answer a question that I get a lot in the emails and it’s how to hit a curveball
better.
I get this question a lot and I’m going to give you four tips to be a better curveball
hitter.
OK?
The first tip that I see a lot of guys doing wrong when they’re trying to hit a curveball
is you want to keep your hips closed as long as possible.
OK?
Where I see a lot of guys fault or mess up when they’re trying to hit a curveball is
when they start that swing and they start to go into that front leg, the first thing
that happens is that heel gets down early and the hips start to open up.
Now if you’ve got a ball that’s coming here and breaking away from you especially
righty on righty, if you go here and that heel is down and your hip opens up, it’s
going to be very hard to hit that good curveball.
So what you want to work on is work on keeping those hips closed as long as possible.
So don’t let that front heel get down or don’t let those hips leak out too early
until you recognize that pitch and go to put a swing on it.
So when you’re striding into that front leg, boom!
Keep these hips squared up, lined up.
Now as that curveball comes in, and you’re moving into your front leg, keep those hands
back.
Keep those hips square and then unload on it.
OK?
Number two is you have to keep your body angle.
OK?
Your body angle is how you set up in the batter’s box.
Now, a lot of Major League hitters may not set up with their body angle.
They may be up tall.
But once they try to get into their body angle, they’ve got a slight lean, chest over toes.
You want to keep this body angle when you’re hitting a curveball.
What I see a lot of guys doing is whether they set the body angle in their stance or
whether they stride into their body angle.
Either way, when they see a curveball, they see it coming up high here.
So they will get here and they go, “Ah!” and they lose that body angle.
Now that ball is moving down away from them and they’re finishing up tall like this.
It’s very hard hitting that curveball again when you lose your body angle or pull this
angle, chest over toes, pull this angle off.
If you stay on it, you have a much better chance of hitting that curveball.
OK?
Tip number three for hitting a curveball better is to do the Jose Lobaton hitting drill.
I had the opportunity to train Jose Lobaton, Major League catcher for the Nationals last
off-season, and he showed me a great drill that he did to work on really getting to his
front leg but staying back and keeping his hips closed as he hit a breaking ball.
Specifically he was working on hitting Uehara’s forkball, which in game three of the playoffs
last year, he hit a walk-off homerun because he used this drill.
So even though he was working on it for a split finger, the same goes for if you’re
working on hitting curveballs.
So I’m going to leave the annotation to that drill right here.
If you want to see that drill, you can click on that and check it out.
It’s a great drill.
But before you do that, tip number four is how about you don’t hit the BLEEPing curveball,
huh?
Look for a fastball.
Get a good fastball.
OK?
If you’ve got a curveball early in the count, spit on it.
You don’t want to hit that big, loopy curveball early in the count.
Just wait for the fast ball, right?
If you’ve got a curveball late in the count, you should be in the two-strike approach so
you’re only swinging at curveballs that are going to be strikes, right?
Not chasing anything out of the zone.
So you’re hoping to get yourself into a good hitter’s count and then attack a good
fastball.
That’s the best way to hit a curveball is to hit the fastball before you got to hit
curveballs.
All right?
So those are the four tips I’m giving you.
I hope those helped.
Don’t forget to check out that Jose Lobaton hitting drill.
Keep those hips closed.
Keep your body angle and start crushing some baseballs.
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