This is the second story in a five-part series that examines how swing biomechanics and the proliferation of technological tools are helping hitters.
It's interesting in that it begins with a Haniger story
Point being, sure Judge has to face tougher pitchers today but he also has a ton of help preparing him to hit against them that Ruth didn't have. I am guessing Ruth didn't even have a hitting coach. He figured the whole thing out himself and put up a number that stood for 34 years.Seattle Mariners outfielder Mitch Haniger was a minor leaguer riding a spring training bus in 2015 when he overheard a conversation with career-altering ramifications. Then in the Diamondbacks organization, he listened in as big leaguers A.J. Pollock and Nick Ahmed discussed hitting in a way that ran contrary to everything that he’d ever been taught. How do I keep the bat in the hitting zone for longer?
Soon afterward, Haniger downloaded an ebook written by independent hitting coach Bobby Tewksbary, Elite Swing Mechanics. The 120-page written tome and supplementary video tutorial, Haniger says, emphasized “facts and physics” in place of baseball truisms such as “stay inside” the ball and “swing down”—imprecise phrases that can mean different things to different players. (A pitched baseball typically reaches the batter while traveling at a downward angle of 7 to 10 degrees, which ought to dispel any notion of swinging down on the ball.)
Still, Haniger struggled early in Double A that season and saw his playing time wane. He asked to be demoted and went back to Class A ball, where he “changed everything about my swing.” By August of the following season, Haniger had made his major league debut, going 2-for-4 with a double and a triple against the Mets. Traded to Seattle in the offseason, he joined the Mariners and blossomed into an All-Star who received MVP votes in 2018. Much of his mechanical overhaul was done under the guidance of a consortium of gurus: Craig Wallenbrock, Doug Latta, Tim Laker, and Matt Lisle. (Laker is now the Mariners’ hitting coach, and Lisle is the White Sox’ hitting analytics instructor.)
The right-handed slugger now quickly whips the bat barrel into the zone, where it remains on a slight upward plane toward the ball. This grants Haniger more time to react to the pitch and adjust his swing. When he does make contact, this swing path is more likely to send the ball on an airborne trajectory, which can maximize damage. To this day, Haniger uses tools such as the Blast Motion bat sensor to track his swing path and the Rapsodo and HitTrax tracking systems for feedback on both his swing path and batted-ball data.
“Five years ago, the swing was still a secret,” Tewksbary says. “Now, it’s not.”
A growing number of major league hitters have rejuvenated their careers by reinventing their swings. Sluggers such as Josh Donaldson, J.D. Martinez, Mookie Betts, Justin Turner, and Daniel Murphy are among the most high-profile players to have improved their fortunes dramatically—either resuscitating careers going nowhere or adding additional power.
But another thing has also become clear: what separates Double A players and big leaguers has less to do with raw athleticism than it does with the finer points of biomechanical sequencing.
https://www.sporttechie.com/mlb-basebal ... y-science/