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| SOFTBALL LINKS |
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One Dimensional Approach
by Dave
Tuesday, December 04, 2007
I was reading earlier today, on a fastpitch softball forum, the opinions of a person who said something along the lines of "slap hitting is garbage." He felt girls should learn to hit the ball hard and give up the slapping. Later I had a conversation with someone who is putting together a new softball organization with the help of a friend. The two ladies played Div 1 college ball. One played as recently as five years ago and the other hasn't played in several years longer than that. They are, however, both big fans of the game and observe college ball on a regular basis. The older of the two said something to me about how all these fathers want their darling daughter to grow up to be slap hitters to the exclusion of everything else. She went on to say, "you think all these college girls who slap can't do anything else? Think again." I have to agree.
The prevailing wisdom says that if a girl can't hit the ball hard, the only way to go is slap hitting. The point at which this determination occurs is apparently sometime in the 10U years. A little girl with some speed struggles to get the ball out of the infield so what we do is turn her around to the left side and start teaching her to slap. Seems easy but it really, really is not.
Slap hitting is definitely a specialty which must be worked at with a tremendous amount of time and effort. It isn't easy to do. The footwork alone takes quite a while to master but that's only a small part of it. The rest of the body posture and the swing itself are no easy tasks. After you've mastered the footwork, posture, and swing, now you're ready to start vectoring the ball while your head is moving towards the pitched ball. Now there's a difficult task.
I believe that if you want to learn to slap effectively, you've got to devote at least a year to learning the mechanics and then another trying to "perfect" them. After this amount of time, you are ready to start seeing some pitches and trying to slap them into play. And the point I'm going to try to make is you can't just drop everything else and focus exclusively on slapping. You've got to be more multi-dimensional than that.
I once had a slap-hitter on my team and she was coming along nicely with her technique. But slapping is all she could do. She stopped taking any regular swings at pitches. The result was she forgot how to swing. Once everyone realized that she couldn't hit, what they did when she came to bat was move the middle infielders up to the pitching plate distance from home, bring third and first in similarly though a little deeper and on the lines, and then position the outfielders to pick up the slack for the infielders who were drawn in. Defensively, it worked every time because the girl had great difficulty getting the ball past the anyone. She had become so one dimensional that she wasn't even able to get the ball out of the infield. She ended up being, I think, 0 for the year.
The best slap hitters in the world do not merely put the ball on the ground and go. They are capable of hitting it over the outfielders' heads if they draw in too closely. They are capable of making infielders eat the ball if they come in too tight. When the defense moves to counter their slap hitting, they are as capable of taking advantage of the defensive realignment as they are of slapping to holes if the infield doesn't react to their style of hitting. They are also capable of bouncing the ball over the drawn-in infielders', perhaps outfielders', head if that's the best oppotunity. Slap hitting is not a one dimensional strategy. It is an oppoortunistic one.
I watched a girl with moderate base-running speed struggle through a season in an older division recently. She couldn't buy a hit for the winning lottery ticket despite having long arms and pretty good strength. I believe she thought she just was no good at hitting. She had nobody to tell her that the problem had to do with improper swing mechanics and a failure to practice a good stroke. What this girl needed was time at the batting tee - lot's of it. Instead, she began to slap hit from the left side. She was a natural right-handed hitter. Her footwork was intermediate at best, she tended to begin early, pull out before making contact, and really just stick out the bat rather than taking a real slap-stroke. The result was a lot of grounders to third basemen who then threw her out, 99 of 100 tries, by about two steps. The times she failed to put the ball into play, she would wait until two strikes and then switch back to the right side to finish the at-bat. This had the effect of reinforcing the defense's suspicion that the girl was just trying to slap from the left side, and giving her an at-bat down in the count. That had the effect of reinforcing the girl's belief that she couldn't hit from the right side any more.
The lessons I learned from observing this girl were: you might think you're fast but slap hitters need to be really fast; simply putting the ball into play might work at young ages but in older age groups, they're going to get you out if you don't put the ball into the right spot; slap hitters need to really have command of their craft the way other specializations do, and you need to have something else so you can keep defenses honest.
I believe that when you switch a girl around from right to left in order to work slapping into her repertoire, you've got to teach her to hit (in the usual sense) from the left too. This way, she'll be able to do more than simply punch the ball into play. If the infield counters, she'll be able to give the ball a whack and thereby get them to move back the next time she's up. Now that can be a potent weapon.
Aside from examining what a slapper can do in any given at-bat, there are certain situations in which she is not going to want to slap. She's sometimes going to want to hit a sacrifice fly, maybe put down a sacrifice bunt, or do anything other than her limited slapping skill. I can't begin to count the number of times a designated slapper has come to the plate in a situation in which doing anything but slapping could have broken the game open for us. Instead we end up with a runner nailed at the plate because the ball was hit directly to a shortstop or other infielder 40 feet from the batter who had an easy throw to the catcher before the runner got two thirds of the way home.
There have also been a number of times when a self-designated slapper has come to the plate with runners at first and second with one or no outs - the perfect sacrifice opportunity. The infield pinches in because they know the girl can only slap. Then when she puts down a sac bunt, they're already in position to field and throw the runner at third out with the leftfielder covering the bag. It's very frustrating.
To me the girl who has a solid approach at the plate can cause havoc when she also possesses the slapping skill. Defenses don't know what to do with her. They can pinch in but she'll probably lace one over their heads. They can play straight but she'll put one in the hole and advance the runners that way. She can drop down a bunt and really get the inning started. If you've got a runner at third, she can pop one out to at least the middle of the outfield gaps and sacrifice her in. She is multi-dimensional.
My advice to the aspiring slap-hitter is to start things off by teaching yourself to hit from the left side. You don't have to develop real fence power but you've got to be able to hit a linedrive into the outfield. Then, once you are able to do that, start working on slap technique. Work diligently at this skill while also continuing to take regular BP from the left side. When you get in games, don't automatically default to slap. Take a couple hard hacks at some pitches. That'll teach the infielders a little religion and get them back to playing at an honest distance. Then when they're back in regular positions, try a slap. If they pull in again, swing at the ball.
Multi-dimensional slap hitters derive great benefits from being able to lace a single or hit a flyball once in a while. Often pulling the fielders in can open holes that weren't there before. And being able to do that, can open things up for drag bunting. Bunt a few times and pull the infielders back in or get them up on their toes. Then show bunt and pull back and slap one past them as they come charging. Do that in sacrifice situations like the one above and you'll blow games wide open. You'll become an indispensable tool for your team and theenemy of anyone who plays you. They'll begin to hate you and you may find yourself hit by a few pitches!
Finally, when I think of slappers, I think of the world's best ones. For example, take Caitlin Lowe - obviously one of the best softball players ever to walk onto a diamond. She's technically a slapper, maybe the best slapper ever. She's a rock solid .400 hitter. But did you know that she is fourth all-time at Arizona in triples? She also slugged .564 during her 2006 year. For another example, how about UCLA's Andrea Duran? I suppose you might not think of her as purely a slap hitter but her stroke is definitely slap derived. I think of her as being best described via the oxymoronic term "power-slapper." When she stands at the plate, she is equally capable of pounding a ball into the ground (which will then not re-enter the planet's atmosphere until she steps on first) as she is of hitting one out of the yard. Now there's a multi-dimensional hitter!Labels: batting
 
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