Baseball is at a point today where there is so much technology breaking through, and it is a truly wonderful time in developing players. There will always be scrutiny with technology in any industry where there is a breakthrough. I can assure you BlockBuster didn't see Netflix running them out of business. Technology in baseball will never change the way it is played, and will not get rid of coaches. There is purity in our game, which is why there is also much backlash when anything of the norm enters. The one thing with tech, is that if you are a coach, instructor, etc.. you better get familiar using it. The game is moving quickly towards it and anyone who is unwilling to learn how to use it will be questioned heavily in the future and could possibly see themselves having a hard time advancing in the game.

Assessing & Re-Assessing

Very basic terminology as to what we use Blast Motion for in our facility. You can't improve on what you don't measure. Day 1 for hitters involves walking through basic hitting as we want to see the way they move, Starting off on T, moving to Front Toss, and then into Live BP with a coach throwing. We like to record swings in our Front Toss rounds and Live BP rounds in our evaluations. We will further go into detail as to why here in this post. We look to record anywhere from 10 swings in each round so 20 total. Below, I am going to list what we look at in regards to Blast Motion's metrics, what it means, and how we use it to coach our hitters and the process of re-evaluating what you are doing with your players.

Bat Speed – Unlike other sensors on the market, Blast Motion reads the speed of the sweet spot of the bat where others read the end of the bat. Blast Motion's measurements of what averages are at age levels are

• Little League: 42-56 mph
• Senior League: 48-62 mph
• High School: 55-71 mph
• College/Pro: 62-78 mph

Through our testing here at The Grind House, what we have seen is our more successful High School hitters who have trained with us have swing speeds in the 65mph-75mph range. This is evaluated by us being able to put our hitters on machines in game like speeds and using batted ball data as a reference. So the lower end of Blast's measurements at 55mph, you will have a hard time catching up to a High School ace (average 85mph Fastball). We have had some youth studs roll through our facility between the ages of 10-12 and we have seen swing speeds of 50mph-60mph produce great results with batted ball data.

How to improve this?

Not sure why I fight this battle with my athletes.. but I do. Get in the weight room and eat better to put on size. Truthfully, it is the answer to most development for players but we want to contemplate the position of the rear elbow when the swing speed is that of what some of my youth athletes are at.

Overload-Underload

It is nothing new in the development world, but it has been scrutinized for reasons we continue to disprove. What some may not understand of the over/under training is its use and periodization for the athletes. Using weighted bats is a form of work to help develop a pattern for the athlete that is more efficient without having to cue the athlete. Thus the athlete is able to develop the pattern themselves and being able to understand it for long term benefits. We use a nonlinear method to training High School ages and below with weighted bats for several reasons. In a traditional periodization model, the goal is to build in the offseason, peak before season, and maintain during. This works well in the strength & conditioning world, but from our experience due to playing schedules and time, varying the weight, frequency, and intent levels has shown us best results to changing patterns and having the athlete at their best. College and Pro hitters tend to benefit more from the traditional periodization model because of the length of their seasons.

Here is some research from Dr. Coop DeRenne who has done great work on the implement over weighted bat training.

Weighted Bat Research

Movements

The greatest swings of the game all consist of the same sequencing pattern. The ability to work from the ground up generating rotational energy into the barrel last is key. That is about as much as I will touch on as far movements, because that is exactly what they are. In the hitting world we harp on mechanics such as the positioning of their lead forearm etc.. while they definitely can be factors as to why the swing can be out of sequence, mechanics tend to be cookie-cut and therefore we take a systematic view when developing our hitters.

Attack Angle

Maybe the 2nd thing we attack with our hitters when their assessment shows a red flag, no pun intended. Best hitters in the game all have a positive attack angles.

We want to put our hitters between 5 and 15 degrees consistently. A barrel that has a negative attack angle limits its contact points and can also be telling a story as to the hitters barrel depth, timing, and a few other factors. Below is another example from FanGraphs & Dr. Alan Nathan on the study of ball flight and attack angle.

As you see, we want to miss working slightly up through the centerline and the decent angle of the fastball for the best chances of flush contact and max exit velocity.

How to change it?

We have a staple drill series we put guys through to feel either more or less angle. It usually involves some proprioception work as well too with PVC pipes. I strongly recommend to invest in The Backspin Tee if you have issues with a negative attack angle. It's a great product to not only help that, but many other swing issues. You can head to their site to purchase one here Backspin Tee.

Vertical Bat Angle

This fits one of our principles of our Swing Authority program, Adjustability. Blast Motion has stated a vertical bat angle of -20 to -30 degrees is optimal. Through our findings, we have seen the higher pitches in the zone needs to be closer to -15 to -20 degrees and the lower pitches in the zone need to be -30 to -35 degrees. This is all taken into account of a few other body positioning factors but helps us indicate as to the hitter can be struggling on certain pitch locations. Notice all negative degrees, so the barrel is below the hands near impact. I fight the 2d crowd when you see the picture of a barrel that looks around 0 to -5 degrees (giving people the impression of a "level" swing). There is a story behind that picture. Posture and pitch location will affect the outlook of that picture. Try to swing with a barrel at 0 to -5 degrees on pitches low and away and you'll be getting ready to play Yahoo fantasy baseball next year.

How to improve this?

Preach adjustability with your hitters. By giving them a task and focusing externally on ball flight, the body will self-organize itself to reach the goal. Ex. Placing a tee low as it will allow and asking the hitter to pepper the outfielders. Some of this with younger hitters has to do with forearm and grip strength which is in our rotations for our program. A simple and effective exercise to train this would be to use a bat with a donut and having a hitter grip the end of the bat going to through radial deviation, ulnar deviation, supination, and pronation as seen in the image below.

Power

One of the most interesting measurement I think Blast reads because it is probably easily misunderstood. I've had little guys come in here with freaky numbers and have seen big guys come here and double check the sensor and change it out, thinking there was something wrong with it. Blast's reading of Power is a great tool to read how well hitters can generate energy from the ground up. Where hitting has mostly always been taught to land soft on your front side, you could possibly be limiting yourself with a lot of force.

How to improve this?

To no surprise, my first response will be to get in the weight room. Any young hitter reading this, I hope before you hop on Fortnite tonight that we can mix in a workout as you see how important it is for your development. The next would be to work on your lead leg adjustability. Behind able to decelerate your hips and work against a firm front side is huge for force production and adjustability to off-speed pitches. No-stride drills with a small base can help a hitter feel their front side along with hitting barefoot for proprioception. A cue we give to some hitters is to swing their front side down, and when it gets down, screw their front foot in.

On Plane Efficiency

With Blast Motion's new update (which is awesome), this used to be described as On Plane Percentage. Blast reads the start of the hitters downward arc of the barrel and uses an algorithm for impact to read how early the hitter gets his barrel on plane. From our findings, the hitters with good barrel depth have the highest percentages. This is huge for a hitters adjustability in the zone.

How to improve this?

Part of the focus on the overload/underload program is to change what we call a push pattern. When we video our hitters, you'll see sequencing issues in this pattern along with the barrel cutting across the body when it enters the zone. It makes it very hard for a hitter to adjust to higher level pitching when they age as velocity increases and off-speed pitches become harder to recognize out of the hand. Usual batted ball data shows very high launch angles to their opposite field side (fillet or sliced flairs, and low launch angles to their pull side (top spun liners or spun off groundballs). Using a 3 ft PVC pipe we work on hitters feeling their bottom hand go palm down to the ground & top hand go palm up once their shoulders have begun rotation in the sequence.

Time to contact

Last but not least is an important measure for everything we stated above. The goal overall is to correct these inefficiencies without having to sacrifice the hitters triggering mechanism time. .15 is the goal for hitters to be able to achieve. What we have seen though and its being proven in our facility, all hitters are different. Some hitters time to contact can be higher but have more success with higher velocity than someone who's time to contact is quicker. Other factors of vision, timing, competitiveness, start to come into play. One thing is always constant, Hitters Hit.

Blast Motion has released some new metrics that we are still testing here in our facility and once we have collect enough data, we will release our findings.

If you are coach, you have someone's career in your hands. Keep that in mind when your are telling a hitter to do something. I strongly recommend a coach to invest the $150 to help your training with your athletes. The thing with data is, it's objective not subjective. Your opinion on what your eyes see are yours and may not be exactly what is happening. Don't guess and leave things to chance. You can click here to Blast Motion's site to to purchase a sensor. Blast Motion

We are still running evaluations for our Winter Development program in Swing Authority. You can head to our evaluation page to submit a form to come into our facility and receive your metrics and a screen.

Register for an Evaluation

If you have any questions on the use of the Blast Motion Swing Sensor feel free to reach out to me at TylerP@GrindHouseBaseball.com

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