Hitting Spin Successfully

Everybody. Hi, everybody. Welcome into another edition of the Lab. It's the podcast episode 126. Happy holidays. And closer to Christmas. Thank you for being with us today. Our new listeners. We see you and welcome to the podcast where we talk about hitting baseball and tangibles and all that fun stuff. And onto our old listeners. Thank you very much for once again tuning in Apple Google Spotify

or wherever you get your podcasts and listening on the YouTube page. The lab Epstein hitting podcasts. If you haven't done so already, please subscribe. We get new subscribers at a snail's place, but we do get them on the YouTube side. So thank you very much for the great listenership on the audio end of things. We do see you and of course on YouTube watching the show.

Okay, let's get into today's topic hitting curveballs hitting sliders. How are you today, sir? I'm doing just great. It's not 20 degrees today. So it's a balmy 35 out. So feeling pretty good. Feeling pretty good. Get outside today. One for a walk yesterday. Because it was sunny. But it was kind of busy walk. Do you take the new dog for a walk again? Not that one.

The new one doesn't have long enough legs. So I mean, it was it was cold. It was close like an hour. And I was frozen by the time. Like as soon as I turned into the wind, Holy cow. My face about froze off. And then I thought of you in Florida, where it's sunny and warm and trees are green. Rasa's green cursing me. Yeah. That's not

right. But today it's nice. Today no wind. There'll be 40 something might put my swimsuit on and walk around the neighborhood. Really? Right. I was the other night. I saw the episode King of Queens. The King of Queens episode where their next door neighbor. It was Brian Cranston actually was a guest. Starting that where he got that up ground pool. And he was rubbing in their

faces. That's that just reminded me of. That's a good show. Next week, we won't be here. So you'll hear cross functionality on both Monday on the lab Epstein hitting podcast YouTube page, the RSS feed. And you'll hear it on Wednesday on the So on the Sopple strength Academy you'll watch it on the Sopple strength Academy YouTube page. Hopefully. And hear it on the cross functionality RSS

feed. But I want to bring up something because this week on cross functionality. Please subscribe if you haven't done so already. Cross dash functionality with Cassie Riley Bosch and I Apple Google Spotify. Of course, wherever you get your podcasts or the Sopple strength Academy YouTube page. We talked about player intangibles. And that's the topic that we're going to talk about in the new year in 2023

as it relates to hitting the player intangibles. What are some intangibles that you look for as a coach in trying to develop an a player. Yeah. And intangibles are interesting because you know why are certain players just. Physically better, maybe not stronger or bigger, but why do they why are they able to move the bat faster because you have guys like say I'll to pay for

instances. You know, not a big guy's put together really well. But I mean, if you were to compare him with other athletes around the world that are his size. Why is he able to do what he does. And that plays a big part in what we're going to do. We do at least, you know, when we're when we're scouting when we're looking at players, you know,

I'm a piece that's that's the hitting piece. I'm not the fielding piece. I'm not a throwing piece. I don't know how explosive they are. I get there 60 times, but it's, you know, they're not breaking it down. They're not giving me vertical stuff and things like that. So I'm I'm basing it on hitting only in and of that hitting most of that is mechanical. We know,

let's make sure that there's nothing. And catastrophic that would hold this player back, whether it's a 14 year old international player or whether it's a 17 year old or college amateur, you know, you know, amateur draft players. So, you know, we see all these different things and how they move and we want to make sure that it's usable at the big league level. So other intangibles,

you know, that all look at. So I'll look at a lot of video. How do they react? How do they react in game? What's our personality like? Do they are they heart on themselves? Is they are they are they stress free when they go to the plate? Do you see the tenseness go from the on deck circle to home plate? Things like that are very very

very important. Those are the intangibles that I really see that put players over the edge or the the mental, the visual intangibles, the relaxation. You know, can they slow their heart rate down to to be able to use maybe their good swing or their good plan that they took to the plate. We've talked about players that I've had in the past that were. Amazing athletes and

amazing, you know, batting practice hitters, but when we get in the game, they can't take their plan to the plate. We even have a plan, but they don't trust the plan. They don't trust the way they've been pitched the the previous weekend or maybe on the Friday night game versus the Sunday game. Look, they've created a plan for you. They're going to stick to that plan

if they're winning and players not be able to make adjustments. So a lot of times for me intangibles happen from the neck up. Yeah. So I had a coach in high school, talked about this on cross functionality this week as well. He was an assistant coach, one of those coaches who kind of coach for like their kids, but he and he put more stock into himself

as a coach than what he really was. And he used to always say and this drives me crazy to this day, but in a good way because I was laugh. He always used to say I'm sorry everybody from a little stuff up today, still a little sick getting over a cold. I've had coughing fits over the past three days. I was in the story. Yesterday in

public, grabbing some food, a couple of items and I was out checking out, paying. And I was having I had a cough coughing fit right in front of the lady checking me out. And I had to tell her it was allergies, but she probably was like, I just wish this fucking guy would come out and say he's sick, you know, put a mask on. Luckily, though,

Florida, nobody nobody looks, he dirty looks if you're not wearing a mask or if you're coughing or sick. Anyway, I had this coach in high school and he used to always say this. Play with heart, right? Play with heart. And I thought was stupid back then. As I've gotten older, I think it's even more stupid now, but now I actually add context to his stupidity of,

hey, play with heart. This isn't a rooting movie. We're not going to hear rooting music in the background. This isn't a Disney music. So any time I'm going to give everybody a lesson today. All right. It's time for Jimmy lessons. Okay. Because the apps always the one explaining things don't roll the eyes or your eyes. Son, you know, I'm right. Okay. Playing with it. Play with

heart. All right. If any coach ever anybody I don't care what part of the world you're listening to this show. Any coach whoever says do you play with heart? Do me a favor. Look that coach. Look at that coach. Turn away. Walk away. Never listen to anything that they ever say again. Because it's the stupidest fucking thing of it. A lot of us, I think there's

a lot of things that are stupid. So maybe it's not the stupidest thing, but it's a really stupid idea when a coach says play with heart. But one of the intangibles for a player is effort. We have to be in the right mindset at my opinion to give that proper effort and to be able to finish as an athlete whatever job that may be at the

plate in the field, whatever. Yeah. And there is effort. And a lot of times what we see now is we see false effort because everything's at a showcase or a perfect game event. And you know, guys are diving for balls. They shouldn't die for and they're a little bit too raw raw. And so you do you have to filter with with what you're seeing as a

player, you know, Scout snow recruiters know that, you know, what fall football's hustle is. But yeah, effort. You can't go wrong. I told I had a player go to a go to a camp actually out in Florida at a school. And he's like, app, what should I, you know, what what's really important? I was like, well, number one, you know, hustle out to your position. Hustle

in from your position. I'm not going to get a hit every time up. When you're taking batting practice, show them that you can go the other way. Show them that you can hit a ball out of the park. You know, show off your skill set. He's fast. I said, but don't whatever you do, don't get frustrated. Don't throw your helmet. Don't smash your bat. If something

is bad, if you have a bad moment, just go back into the dugout, put your batting gloves in your helmet and hustle out to your position. That sometimes will lead to more respect from a coach, then getting a base hit that a bat. If they can see how you deal with it, you know, you can see how you can get a hit. If you have to

play with adversity, that's very, very important. So, you know, yes, you want to have heart or you want to put through effort, but you have to be able to enjoy the moment. You have to, you have to enjoy. If you don't, if you have to, like what you said, play with heart. If you don't play with heart, then you shouldn't be playing, right. You should be

doing something else. You should be studying or playing a different sport or taking, you know, music lessons. Everybody that's on the baseball field. Or softball field should be playing with heart. They shouldn't always. I agree. I agree. I agree. 100% with you. But I just don't know, like, how do you do that? Because you're standing around for so much of the game. How do you, how

do you play with heart? If you play with too much passion, you out-site yourself. Yeah. Right. I mean, if you're, if a pitcher is out there, I don't care how intense you see, Mac Shurser, he is always in control. Always, always in control. Because if you're not in control and you're just playing with heart, playing with heart, playing with wildly, you're not going to hit your

spot. You're not going to have command as a pitcher. And as a hitter, you're going to deviate away from your plan. So I don't know the whole. I get some trying to figure out how do you define playing with heart. And I don't feel like figuring it out because I have a bad cough. So I say, fuck it. And I say, just rely on the proper

effort. I also want to bring up another thing about effort to, you know, players like to work on, you know, you know, this they love to work on hitting, right. People love to talk about hitting. People like to argue about hitting. People like to pay 500 dollars. To watch two guys argue about hitting. That's how people, how much people love hitting. Okay. Why would you do

that when you have this bot gas for free. Okay. Notwithstanding though, I got to tell you, with players, I've noticed, they don't like to work on the smaller intangible type things, right. Like, for example, keeping their back rounded when they're fielding ground balls, working on their hands, working on their footwork, working on their footwork. They're baserying their base running awareness. It's always hitting hitting hitting. So

my point is oftentimes that I believe that effort is can be misplaced. And what a player is doing in their. He uses word what they're doing in their process to get better. It's all about the process. It's all about preparing. It's all about practicing the right way. And then when you get on the field, show yourself. Show what you could do. But you can't change. You

get out on the field of, you know, and be a different person than you are every day or a different person that you've practiced. I'm practicing my, my footwork on my ground balls. And then you go into a game and you're thinking about your footwork. Oh my goodness. That's not the time to think about it. So again, going back to maybe episode one and me being

a huge John Wooden fan, you know, prepare over prepare. And then you have to let the players ability and preparation shine through. They don't, if it doesn't work, you don't change it mid game. You work on something else at practice that will help that player. So yeah. Play with heart kids. If anybody out there. I just want to let some left people know if anybody out

there paid or pay or pays $500 to watch to judge hit or argue about hitting. First of all, you can do that for free with two. Every week. Yeah. You know, you know, I can teach anything. If you want, I can teach every kind of hitting out there. But it doesn't mean that it's right. But if anybody pays that $500, you need to head examined. Yeah.

The holiday season. You got to invest your money. Something else. I mean, come on. Really. Take the $500 and go to like a football game. Go to a bowl game. There you go. Go to a college football bowl game and go actually watch, watch athletes do what they're doing. And you'll learn a lot more. I'm going to get out of it. I've had a cough for

a week. So I'm a little bit of a crabby mood today. I apologize. I wish I could give you these. Jim. What's that? What do you got to me? I have them. I have. Those are the only ones that work for me. They, I have the strawberry. Strawberry was. But there's only so many you can take before like your mouth kind of. Yes. And numb because

it's numbing your throat. All right. Well, it's in social. By the way, cross functionality episode 22. Please subscribe and watch the show. Listen to the show. Appreciate that episode 126 here. The lab Epstein hitting podcasts. Follow us at Jim Tara at Epstein hitting. If you have any questions, please email us. Jim Bo podcast 21 at gmail.com. We do have a listener question. We forgot last week.

This is from Mike. He's written in before. And this listener question Mike writes Jim and Jake looking forward to the Belinger fix. I was again, I miss. I forgot to add the question last time. We did the fixing Cody. Last week, go back in the archives. Listen to that. But he wants to talk about Mike does to strike hitting. And he asks, what are your thoughts

on using a no stride approach? I believe that Jake once said he's not in favor of doing so. Tom Verducci did an analysis on tray turner who effectively uses it on the MLB network. Or. I can't. I'm trying to think if I actually saw that analysis. I don't know. I guess on that. Try to drown. Verducci didn't analysis on. If Joe faced no number of votes.

I think we're sourdough say really not to talk about. Back in those days. Should we, shall we? Yeah, maybe a couple didn't attempt to evaluate for ll, yes. Either. What the minute is when did you start your career now? Until it's already set. Yeah, I mean, Harper, I think sometimes does it with two strikes, doesn't he? Yeah, I don't think it's out of the ordinary. So

very timely question. I did it with a player yesterday that I've been working with a high school player that has timing issues. You just always is a little bit late. I actually think he had some vision focusing. I think his death perception is off a little bit like most people's where he sees the ball at a certain spot in space, but the ball is actually like

two inches. I was just the opposite. I had mine tested and you can do these tests at eye doctors. It's not a very difficult thing, but mine was always about an inch early. An inch where my eyes are kind of my left and right eye are coming into an object. I would focus an inch early. And so that's really good for people that throw 95, 98.

If you're on defense, you know, you're seeing the ball a little bit quicker. However, it's not good without speed pitch. I did get hurt and it kind of lost it and never got out. But it was that summer. My dad was coaching somewhere in the minor leagues. I don't remember where it was. And so I went and instead of going to summer ball, I went and

hung out with him for like, I don't know, six weeks or something. And all we did was the nose ride. Every day we did the nose stride. Every day we did the nose stride. And I definitely had less power doing it. But when I went back to school, I kept doing it and I hit four something in the fall. And I remember I hit my first

collegiate home run with the nose stride, you know, without lifting my whole foot off the ground, just my front heel. So it works. I got stale with it, you know, a couple of weeks after that, went back to a stride. Loved the stride. So I would go back and forth. And I think players need to have the ability to do that. So the reason, you know,

Mike had mentioned that I don't like the nose stride. I do like the nose stride for certain players in certain positions. I will not teach a new player a nose stride technique. However, I will not take a nine year old, a 10 year old, 11 year old, a 12 year old and teach them the nose stride exclusively because that player isn't a fully mature strong person.

They need to learn rhythm at some point in their life. They need to learn. So I was a player for instance, this kid that I was working with, I've known for like four years. And we were doing kind of a no legs drill. He was hitting the ball pretty hard. I'm like, hey, why don't we take your stride out of it and just lift your heel

for right now. We were hitting off the machine. And we were working on other things. And I said, just just drop your front heel and let it rip. Take the same swing you've been taking. But just try and the first swing he did it on. And I was totally blown away at how good it was. I wasn't like, he's a right hand. So I didn't think

his front leg would be great. I didn't think he'd be able to push back and really rotate fast. He did. He was actually hitting the ball consistently harder because he was finding more barrels than he was when he had a step which he struggles with. So he's like, do you really want me to do this? I was like, yeah, let's bust out the next month and

do this. We can always go back to a stride. You've been doing it for whatever your whole life. So let's see if this is in the kid loved it. He's like, it feels so good. I feel compact. I am a believer in the no stride. If you're strong enough, if you're a matured player, this player's fairly strong. And you look at big ligters, they're pretty strong.

They can probably move that bat pretty good. So if a big league or lose is a mile an hour, one to two miles an hour on their bat speed, they're still going to hit a ball out of the park. If a little kid loses, they're going to lose more like four or five miles an hour bat speed, then it's a problem. So you're saying, so you're

really saying though when it comes to the two, it's not really an approach. Clearly, it's more so just a quick adjustment that if a player is comfortable with at higher levels, they can do. But it's not exactly a real approach. Could be a two stride. Okay, it could be. What about when the kids are younger and you're trying to develop rhythm? Because what I've noticed with

big ligters or any high level type hitter that does the no stride approach, they still have that type of rhythm. So you need that rhythm built in. Yeah. And as you mentioned, 1112, even 13 year olds, they're still kind of learning their bodies. So I'll tell you this, I'm going through my new list for the draft 2023 draft and the international players. There hasn't been one

no stride person yet. So just to give you an idea, the best, you know, 14 to 15 or there might have been some 13 and a half year olds international players. None of them did a no stride. Okay, there may be people that do it, but they're not on the list to get signed. And the, you know, the first, I don't know, I haven't gone. It's,

I just got the first piece of the list, but the first 50, you know, amateur high school and college, but I haven't seen one yet. So it's not something they're going to showcase. It's something that I'm defensive. I have two strikes. I'm struggling. I'm trying to take risk out of the equation. I'm going to do no stride. So but shut like that's your guy. He, I

mean, that's like the extreme one end of the other when he's got less than two strikes as leg kick, like goes up to his chin. And then when he has, he has two strikes boom, he does, he just kind of lifts his heel and drops it and goes. So. But he almost still has the same rhythm as he would with the big stride. He does still

have the rhythm. So that's the thing with the no stride. And I have like if, if you, you know, those of you that are part of the Epstein online academy, you know, if you go through your library, there's one on the no stride technique, how to do it where we still have rhythm. How do we still pool holes this thing? He did it for 10 years,

12 years of his career, the beginning of screw. Notice when he got older and he lost some strength. He had to start getting a little bit more juice and so he went to a leg kick, but he did it for the front. He won MVP. He was the best hitter in baseball for a long time. Just by kind of rocking into his back leg, lifting his

front heel, having a little weight shift and going. So check that out for you online academy members. If you're not an online academy member, I don't know what you're doing. It is the greatest thing ever. Like you're going to get better in like three months. Like if you have issues, we will work them out remotely. Okay. One of them might be the no stride technique. But

it's probably not most of it's going to be rhythm and technique. Matti Arnold. How's he doing? Matt Arnold? He is. Tell me. Hello. William. He is so smart. And like some people are good managers of people. Some people have different managing styles. That gentleman does it all. He is just. He makes you feel good. He's funny. He's outgoing and he just made an incredible trade. Maybe

he should run for president after that trade. I don't even know. Mind you, speaking of president, he is the vice president of the Loser. Don't know of baseball operations for apps team, apps organization, the Milwaukee Brewers for those who don't know. So he is the head dude. He's the head, the old head Han show. Thanks for Mike for the question. By the way, Jim O'Pock asked

21 at gmail.com if anybody has any questions. We will answer them right here on the show. Hey, how was Westchester, by the way? Westchester was fantastic. Best gesture. Best gesture. It was so great. That organization, the dragons. The kids are great. The coaches are into it. Their leaders are into it. They're, they're, their tech savvy without going, you know, crazy with it. They just, I don't

know. It was a great weekend. It was an action pack weekend. I landed on Friday. We did like three, three and a half hours of a coaching clinic. I think we had 12 or 14 coaches within the organization. We also had another gentleman who was, who was great. Who's a college coach in the area, college hitting coach and who's family is part of Major League Baseball.

I mean, he's just a sharp guy and he, I actually learned things from the coaches, which is really fun for me. You know, different ideas, different experiences that coaches have working with players. So it was fun. Todd, they appreciate that. But it was, um, the kids were great. We went through all the drills. We went through all the fixes. We did some video. Um, it really,

it really went well. You know, we did. It was about, oh, let's see, three hours and it was about seven, eight hours working with the coaches one on one. But then we had about six hours in the middle. Those same coaches working with players. So it's very. There was a lesson in there, by the way. There's a lesson in there. You know, you're an expert, not

a guru. No, no, no, no. We don't use that word on the show either. Three things that are banned on this show, but you are an expert with hitting. Your father was an expert and learned from Ted Williams for those who don't know, new listeners just joining us. It's. But I, you say expert Jim. I'm going to. Okay. Cause I had something there. I did the

math. I totally interrupted you there. But it was kind of the joke of the week when I started the presentation on Friday night was that I did the math. Well, and then I had a career. I have been doing that. I've been okay. I've been coaching now for. For 20 years. 20 years and you know I probably look at videos. You know, that's a 20 years

times, 50 weeks. What is that like. That I calculated from. That a thousand. A thousand weeks and of those weeks, you know, I do at least 10 hours a video. Right. So I've put in probably 15,000 hours. Looking at swings and videos, which. Makes me an expert. Right. automatically. If you come to the front of the screen, right. 10,000 reps. Right. So it was really funny

that you say I can continue. I didn't know. I was going to say, what did you learn? I mean, because coaches, they don't like to learn off each other. They say they do and they get that hogwash, but they don't really like to learn. Yeah. No, you know, what did you learn off? He has, you know, his kids play and his. I think it was his

brothers a hitting coach and I don't remember which organization and so he was just telling me, you know, different drills and different things that they they work. He knows the people that that work for Oklahoma, you know, University of Oklahoma, which is, you know, the best call it collegiate softball program going right now. They hit they hit bombs, they have really great athletes, but they hit.

They hit bombs, but I'm not going to share exactly what we talked about, but they don't necessarily teach you to hit the ball in the air will put it that way. So even though they're the best hitting team, they're, you know, more in line with, you know, they do certain drills and they do certain, they look for certain results that are more in line with what

we teach and what I teach, which makes sense looking at them versus what a lot of college programs have gone to, which is, oh, we want to hit the ball over the fence. We have to, you know, get on playing really early. We have to get under the ball. You know, we have to turn the barrel behind us. And so it's cool to hear different experiences

and the processes of how players practice, you know, what they're working on during this during the off season in order to perform during the season. Well, I'm glad you had fun in Westchester, Pennsylvania. I haven't affinity for Westchester because my cousin went to Westchester University and he's a very successful man in the marketing industry. He is the pride of Westchester University, a great institution as well.

Anyway, a great baseball program, too, a great division to program probably can be a lot of vision, vision ones across the world. Great. Let's get into today's topic, episode 126 talking about hitting curve balls hitting sliders. There's a lot more data out there. Nowadays, though, that would assist a hitter could assist a hitter in hitting curve balls and hitting sliders. How do you decipher some of

that data, the spin rate, the shape, looking at some heat maps, how do you decipher all of that and put it together in a plan where you can actually have a chance against hitting a good curve ball hitting against a really good slide. Well, you can get lost in all the information. That's number one. Man, you have to filter that out from the, from the, whatever,

the data department. Gotta be really careful for that. You have to see it. That's probably the best way to do it. So what's so great about machines now is that you can see something with similar shape. It's not going to maybe be exact shape. It's going to be pretty darn close. So to be able to see that pitch over and over again to have slider day,

you know, I'm going to show up. I'm going to show up at the ballpark early today and I'm going to track 50. I'm not going to swing it 50. I'm going to track 50 and then I'm going to hit 50 and then I'm going to go have a sandwich. And then I'm going to come back and hit some fastballs, you know, at 20 fastballs and call

it a day. So it's preparation breaking balls. We've probably touched on this. But, you know, why are when you look at the draft board, you know, why, why do most of the players that are really successful come or I shouldn't say successful, but that are the type of top of the draft list, the first five rounds. So why are the majority of them from from warmer

weather climates? You know, why are they from Southern California always killed to this day, Southern California is still still dominates that board, which is crazy. When you see Texas and Florida and Georgia, the amount of baseball that they play down there. But it's it's warm weather places. Are they better athletes? No, you get guys from Pennsylvania and you get guys from the Northeast. You get Brandon

Nemo from Wyoming. I mean, I mean, you know, you get players that are the, they're not better athletes. Okay. They just see more pitches. They see more pitches come out of the hand. If you look at the months of November through February or November through March, you know, that's what November December. So I say that's like, we'll say four months. Okay. By the way, for context

purposes talking about months, high school baseball and Florida. I know this for fact, they begin in late February. They start real competition in February. And so if we go back to their younger years too, right, when they're playing travel ball and getting all those at bat. So from say age nine, we'll say age 10 to 16. That's six years of four months of extra baseball. That's

24 months of extra baseball. That's two full years of seeing breaking balls come out of a hand of seeing shape and all that is is database information. So that we see a pitch our brain will categorize that. Oh, it came out of the hand this way. It moved this way. Well, now all of a sudden you have outliers and we're working on different spin rates. And

so what pitches are trying to do, they're not trying to necessarily increase this that me other pressure. They're trying to be different than everyone else. As long as they're different than the norm, then it's going to be harder for that hitter to make that adjustment because we're seeing a ball in space and we're anticipating our brain is saying, where is that going to end up? Okay,

because it's breaking, right? It's a curve ball or a slider. Well, they're going to, they're going to end up in different spots. So if we have an idea based on speed and shape, then we'll be able to react to it. So it sounds like an impossible feat when you think about it, right? A ball is coming to us. We have 0.24 seconds to react to that

pitch. And in a quarter of a second, we have to know when it's going to get to us, when it's going to get to our contact zone. And then where? How far away from our eyes is it going to be? So the way to do that, you can't think your way through that process. You have to practice that process. You have to see breaking balls. Stand

in when pitches are throwing bullpen. Get that database. Go. You don't have to swing at the pitch to be able to categorize it. You need to see that shape. So it starts with that, you know, hitting a breaking ball starts with, okay, what does it look like? There's nothing better than when we start introducing breaking balls to kids at the lab. It's like a 10. It

doesn't mean they're going to have to hit a good breaking ball. But we want them to see that shape. And the first time a kid will come in and hit off a breaking ball machine, right? And that ball shoots right at their head. They bail out and like jump out of the way. Well, that's just a natural response. If they saw a pitch in their game

started their head, they got to get out of the way. Well, wait a second. That ball is moving now. And then the second one, they'll bail out a little bit there. But then by the six or seven swing, at least they're, they're kind of understanding the shape. That's where it starts. I'll say this. I don't know. Lefty is from that perspective, because I am left handed.

Yeah. We struggle most with sliders. I think left handed batters struggle a lot. Well, care what level you're playing. They struggle a lot with sliders. But righty is there. You mentioned it. They struggle more with curve balls. Sometimes it's vice versa. But not really. Why is that? Why don't lefty struggle more with sliders? Why do righty struggle more with curve balls? I mean, even a right

handed hitter off, you know, Randy Johnson, whatever. You know, left handed. That back foot breaking ball is tough. Because it's, it's kind of, you know, boring into them and getting closer to them. And it's slower. So we're thinking to ourselves, we got to let it get deeper. So if we're slower yet, it's coming towards our back foot. So we can't let it get too deep. But

we're going to, you know, fall it off of our foot. So to speak. So it's, it's just a hard pitch that, you know, if you can hit that pitch down and in as a left hand, right? So why do lefties, you people always say, what do they have such pretty swings? You know, is it because they're finishing towards first, you know, they're running towards versa. They

can finish their swing all the way before they start running. Why do lefties typically have more upper cut swings? Okay, it's usually because of their protecting that breaking ball down and in. Okay. So breaking ball down and in, you got us, you know, swing up a little bit more. And then you back that up with a, you know, high riding fastball at the belt, holy cow,

that makes hitting really fastball. Tough where a ride against a ride. Yeah, they have to protect about against that fastball up. But if it's a breaking ball away, at least it's moving away from them, right? You can still, you know, lose your posture. You can still get fooled and throw your bad head and get a piece of that slider breaking away. Okay. You can't do that

on a, if you're an opposite hand, you can't do that on a slider breaking in because it's, it's going to come in and. Oh, it makes it a little bit. More. Typically speed on a. It's the, it's the change of speed that is making us early versus late, you know, on a fastball. So speed dictates a big part of, of where our timing is for sure.

How do we, how do we hit breaking balls? Typically it's having a plan. It's, it's having an approach and knowing what that pitches. If you're looking for a high fastball and somebody throws a slider. Breaking into your back foot, you're going to miss it. And that's okay. That's why we get two strikes. But you're going to miss it. There's no way to cover both of those

pitches. So you have to be able to lay off that. You have to be able to say, okay, I'm going to keep my hands up. I'm sitting on that high fastball because two out of three pitches that this guy throws me are going to be that belt high fastball. If he throws it at my letters, man, I'm probably going to swing at it, but hopefully it

makes him a stay can get to the belt. I can stay on top of it. But if he breaks off that slider, hopefully you can just abort that. That's swing. You have less than two strikes. Okay. You don't want any part of that other pitch. Okay. It's just the way it is. If you're sitting breaking balls the same thing. Now I'm sitting on that breaking ball

because you made me look like a horse's butt. You know, my last time up on on two or three sliders coming at me. Now I'm going to sit on that slider and try to abort anything else. We've talked about many remears and how great he was at anticipating pitches. I just looked at a video of a major league player. I can't really say the name because

I did a analysis for an organization. I don't know if I ran out of this screen, but I'm not even going to try. I'm not going to touch my shoes. I'm not going to stay on it. But I left-handed hitter. I'll just tell you the situation. It was a left on the left. I was a slider. He hit for a homerun. It wasn't a bad slider.

It was me high. The count was Oh no. So he's swung at an O O questionable slider. It wasn't a hanger. And he hit it out of the park. He was right on it. Like, he wasn't fooled or anything. There was no delay. There was no sink. There was no sink. There was no break. I was going to attack him. He hit for one point. I'm

scared. This guy hit for a home run. It wasn't a bad slider. It was me high. It was me high. The count was Oh no. So he's swung at an O O questionable slider. Meaning, he wasn't able to know when we kept his hands back. It was he sat on and it wasn't hard. It was you know, 83 miles an hour, 84 mile an hour slider.

And he hit it out of the park. And so you go back. You're like, this guy just hit an O O slider at the knees out of the park. And then I looked up and it was the third inning. So this was his second time through the order. And so he had a plan. He had a plan. I guarantee you that he saw some breaking balls.

And he liked the way they look. Come out of the hand. He picked them up. And he decided to sit on that. And he was like, this guy is next time up. And even though it wasn't a perfect pitch because he was on it and he saw it, he was able to get through it. And he had a line drive home run to Center Field. It

was pretty impressive. So having a plan and having an approach. Probably is the number one. You know, at that level. Okay. Once you're 16 and older. You know, it's it's having an approach before that. It's how many breaking balls can I see. It doesn't mean I have to swing in all of them. But how many can I see coming out of a hand or. How do

coaches go about training their players in hitting curve balls, hitting sliders, hitting spin. So seeing them. So we'll set up two breaking ball machines. One of curve ball, one of slider. Based on what we think we're going to see that week. So if we're preparing for a bullpen, for instance, the year I was at Mizzou Vanderbilt's two top guys out of it during conference. They had

three guys that came out of the bullpen. Two lefties that were awesome and then a right handed closer. So we knew that once, you know, rocker came out of the game. We were going to see a lefty reliever for an inning or two. And then we were going to see the closer. So we knew that and those lefties through pretty much every game of the series,

would be a station all week during batting practice at practice. We would see that breaking. But we'd always have a fastball machine too. But we'd have two breaking ball machines. So those guys could see it. They could see that shape. And they could bounce back and forth from the fastball to the slider, the fastball to the curveball. If we did all three of those to say

that's that's hard. If you went curveball slide, you know, if a guy has a curve like Verlander has a curve ball in a slider, that's hard. Yeah. I mean, that's that's why he's one a sayon. You know, I mean, it's really difficult to to if a guy can throw three pitches for strikes, you have to have a very, very good plan and not miss your pitch.

And you have to be able to adjust. You have to be able to look fast sometimes with two strikes. And then if you get a break them all, be able to keep your hands back for a split second. It's not going to be a perfect swing. But at least you're going to fall it off or maybe get a piece of it. All right. Well, great stuff

this week. I think anybody has any questions again, Jimbo podcast. And if you want to watch the show on YouTube, the lab Epstein hitting podcast page. Great work this week, my friend. Um, what was the next thing I was going to talk about? Oh, lovely hat. I'm wearing that you're wearing. Where do we get this lab gear from? People are curious. You got to come visit

us at the lab. Of course. South Texas College Station. I'm going to be able to see what we're going to do. Texas, the lab BCS. I know a lot of you are listening. So don't get cheesy because you guys have access to the hats. We do ship those all over the country. We do. You do. That's where you got that really good looking hat. We even

shipped all the way to Tampa, Florida. Look out world. Champa Bay. Hey, how the average doing this year? I don't know. I wait for the playoffs lightning of one five of the last six. All right. Also subscribe Epstein hitting.com Epstein online hitting Academy. Um, all right. Well, we got to go. We're done. We will talk to you. I don't know next week or whatever. I don't

know. Um, thanks for listening, though. We will. We will talk to you. Happy hitting. We will talk to you soon.