Mechanical Breakdown Series - Volume 41: Jeff McNe

This was espallo already. Hi everybody, welcome in to C'mon In. Welcome to another edition of the lab at the City Mod Gaps episode 140, mechanical breakdown series, volume sources are doing Metz Infielder share the video with you and share the guys breakdown the guy I'm talking about my friend co-host, professional evaluator, successful business owner. He's my former coach, but he's current day renowned coach Jake Epstein.

Hi Jim. I'm excited to talk about you. You are chattering and pre-show here. I couldn't get you to be quiet. Now all of a sudden you just give me a one more two word answer. Hi Jim. Well that's all I always do. I want to stay consistent as possible. We're talking about Jeff Medell today. Mechanical breakdown series, volume 40, go back in the archives and watch

and listen to previous breakdowns we've done so many. Recently we've done Julio Rodriguez. We've done Tony Gwynn at Gold Edition. Coming up we're going to be doing 10 Griffey. We've done Derek Geter. We've done Bryce Harper. We've done Manning Macho. We did Manning Macho by the way. A few weeks ago we questioned if we did Manning Macho. We did actually break his swing down a while

back. So go back in the archives and watch on YouTube the lab Epstein Hitting Podcast YouTube page and listen Apple Google Spotify previous episodes. We got a good response from last week's episode requirements of a successful hitting coach part one. We're doing part two next week, but we got a really good response. I think I have a YouTube comment here. That was really funny on the

lab Epstein Hitting Podcast YouTube page. I don't know if you saw this, but when I saw this comments, you see here. We got one that said really enjoy the videos, which is nice. Thank you to whomever posted that Mike Lacey on YouTube. There is one more though. Oh, here it is. Okay, this is from, I don't know if he's trolling us. Probably is, but I want

to read it anyway, because I got a good laugh out of it. This is from the lab Epstein Hitting Podcast YouTube page and he writes, this is no Bundy. K and O W B. You D D E E. No Bundy. He goes, this is a comment on last week's episode requirements of a successful hitting coach part one whistleblowers slash leakers and truth seekers are heroes or

heroes now. Crush, Crush corruption with truth. Be. I'm not making this up. People, by the way, you visit, you if you visit the lab Epstein Hitting Podcast YouTube page, you'll see this comment. Be bold, brave and smart. Have faith and no fear. See what you can do. If the truth will kill them, let them die. So we're apparently, either he's trolling us or that person's trolling

us or we're truth seekers of requirements of a successful hitting coach. Yeah. He may have posted that to four or five million. Yeah. I'm gonna be my desk. But, well, I'm choosing us there, buddy, nobody. We invite all comments to the lab Epstein Hitting Podcast page and to our email address, jimbo podcast 21 at gmail.com. I think we had a listener question this week. I just

forgot to put it on the run now. So maybe we'll get to it next week. A couple of things before we get to Jeff McNeil. By the way, I'm really excited to do the Jeff McNeil swing break down today. I don't know about you, but I guess because the meds are just filled with stars, he's just not talked about enough as being great, great, great hitter.

His back to ball skills. Yeah. His, his barrel awareness, his barrel control is incredible as well. I mean, he is a great hitter. Real, I love watching hit. Well, you don't look into when a batting title. You have to have certain certain skills of death perception and vision and approach and mechanics and hands and body awareness. I don't know what he hit last year, 330 or

326 or whatever it was. But if you listen to him talk, he's like a, he's an old soul, man, he's an old school guy, chokes up a lot. He's all about, I heard him say something to the topic of, you know, a lot of people go to get their bats. We talked about that. I think that was that last week. Okay. So you brought, I'm glad

you brought this. I was going to bring it up later, but we can talk about it now. We talked about the puck bat handle or the big knob, whatever it's called, big, that big huge knob that a lot of hitters are using now across major league baseball. And I saw a video. I think you and I watched the same video when I was preparing for the

show with Jeff McNeil. He uses a very flat type knob, but he still the barrel of the bat is still fairly heavy. And he started using this. I don't know how many years ago it was, but there's a stark contrast to what say Paul Goldschmidt uses with that big knob type bat. That Jeff McNeil uses a much smaller knob. And by the way, Jeff McNeil chokes

up a lot. Yeah. Well, there's no knob. It's just right. There's no. I'm trying to see. I have one here. Hopefully it's not the traditional knob. Look at it. Look at me. I'm going backwards. I know with your, you and your mic, your mic stand there, you playing with the mic. Maybe that's why the volume was so loud. You're playing with the mic. Coming back. All

right. So this is. Get your wondering. I don't know if you can see that. That's right. But that's all right. What's that? I don't know who signed that. He rose. He rose. This is a Pete Rose gamer. Yeah. And you can see. There's no knob on that. Right. It just flares. There's the end of it. Okay. So this is the same. I'm kind of bat McNeil

uses. And if you can see the grain in this bat is so amazing. I don't know. Straight. It's because what's the, what's the size dimension? Is it heavy? 34? Yeah. I mean, it's not. It's not light. It's probably a 3432 3431. Okay. It's not super heavy. I think McNeil is probably bigger than that. But in that, in that segment, we looked at, or we saw McNeil

said, you know, not a lot of guys are going down and getting fitted for a bat that gives them more bat speed. And, you know, maybe more exit velocity. He says, I need barrel awareness. I need to be able to control the barrel. And this is what feels most comfortable for me. He's like, I don't care if I hit 30 miles an hour. As long as

it I can hit a line drive, you know, over the short stops head, you know, into left field. And that's just an old school player. And when we break down a swing and watch him, he's, he's very feel oriented. You know, we're going to look at one swing. It happens to be a home run because they typically don't put, you know, there's not a lot of

video of guys slapping balls the other way around ball through the hole. Yeah. We don't get those highlights. But, but if you do go in there, you can see, meaning side shots. You can get front shots. But side shots. But as I was going through kind of researching him a little bit more, you know, he's taking pitches with two strikes at his ladders and his vertical

bat bat angles like, you know, 10 degrees. And he's standing on top and shooting it down the left field line. And then he takes balls that he hits out in front. But he's ahead of the count. And he's able to, he's not going to hit a lot of home runs, but he's able to, you know, hit him in the seat. He's able to drop his barrel

a little bit more. So we're going to get a really good look at this. So I definitely, those of you probably listening to this, you know, on a workout or in a car. It's kind of what I do when I listen to podcasts, but you're going to want to watch this one. You're going to want to, you know, pull it up on the, the lab, I'm

hitting YouTube page or yeah, that's where you're going to want to watch it. So you're going to want to watch, you know, you don't want to watch this segment of me just talking, but with the breakdown, you're definitely going to want to check out because it's pretty cool. There's a bat path image that Hawkeyes using now that we're going to kind of tap into. I do

want to talk about the lab Epstein hitting podcast YouTube page, by the way, for those listening and watching. And if you go to that, you were close. I mean, and only took you a couple of weeks for Jimbo podcast, 21. sign by when did you get that sign by the way by P rose that when you were a kid too? Yeah, that was probably. Oh, I

had the. I don't know. Where your dad can play with him. Right. I have a picture with him and I look like I'm about. Oh, yeah. Seven. Okay. Seven or eight. I mean, he's got a red uniform on and it's spring trading. And your dad didn't play with him. Nope, just against him. Yeah. They played against the other of the world series. I would love to

hear what your dad would think about Pete Rose playing against him. What it was like these people. Yeah. Well, again, we got to get big mic on. So yeah, I'll set it up. I'll see him mother's day. Maybe we'll we'll set up a time. If I can get his computer set up, we'll get him. Get him on. There's some big mic stories. Aficion offense, by the

way, I say this. I feel like every season, but it's worth noting again. And Jake tells his offense is this kids that he coaches and players and whatnot. Aficion offense. I saw this with the Texas Rangers last Sunday. 15 runs on 11. I think this was that they play the Yankees. I don't remember, but 15 runs on 11 hits. That's about as efficient as an offense.

As you can possibly have. Remember, more runs are runs are equal to or greater than hits in an efficient offense. Meaning if you score two runs on one hit, that means that you had a very efficient offensive type innings, extra base hits, saw a lot of pitches, drew walks, good base running. You did all the little things along with the big things correctly. So just keep

that in mind. Offense, Mr. Right. My kid, yes, my kid yesterday had the most efficient at bat. She was two for one in the same at bat. Well, how about that? Yeah. So the first pitch, she, she hit a live drive into right center field. And she get, there's a double. She gets a second base. It was like, you know, she's skinny. Like for her to

hit a ball through the outfield is pretty good. She gets a second. The umpire in the field called an illegal pitch. So it didn't count. How's that possible? Yep. Don't worry. Jake didn't get thrown out. So you get thrown out. You got thrown out yesterday. I didn't get thrown out. Oh, man, you got to get thrown out. That would be a great story. I know. It's

very counts. So she comes back. It was, it's a first inning. She's hitting. Was she hitting. I think she was hitting second or third. Right. We're trying to get a rally going. So I'm like, oh my gosh. We just stole that. So then she battles and ends up going to a full count. And she got another hit to left center. So the softball gods were on

our side. But I told her, I said, that's one way to get your average up is to get two hits for one at bat. And it's for one. That's good. It reminds me of a time when I was playing football. It was 10 years old. I may have told this story before. It was 10 years old. And there is this gentleman. I won't mention the name.

But there is this gentleman that was coaching with my dad in the dugout. And this, this, this gentleman says to my dad, yeah, my son, I won't say his name either. My son is hitting 1,125. Oh, and my dad goes, his first name was Steve. That's my dad goes Steve. That's that batting average is impossible. What is it? Maybe he was, maybe he was referring to

opus. You know, maybe he was, maybe he came up with some analytical number before there was analytics. This was like back in like 1999 2000. So people can do the math and figure out my age at that point. That's what that story reminded me of your daughter going to for one. She got two hits. And raised her batting average. How do you get two hits and

one at bat? Who knows? That's that. Could you imagine? Can you imagine going to have to be like, I'm going to go for another one. All right. I know. Go strutter. Go strutter. You single you single the other way and say, I don't like how I hit that. You know, let's do it again. Let's go again. That's right. The goes runner too. You should have gotten

thrown out though. I'm a little disappointed in you. I really honestly, it's so easy to get thrown out of a youth. A youth game. What you don't know the empires don't put up with any and they shouldn't. But if you were, if you were, if you were to get ejected, what would you say? What would be the magic words that would get you ejected from a

long. I've been ejected at much higher levels. Okay. Did you ever get ejected as a player? I did. I never did. Yeah. Yeah. That was one thing. Before I got released from Pro Ball, it was like, I got to make sure that I get tossed. All right. So you brought it up the list. Yeah. It was the best $15 fine I ever paid. It was. Sure

was. Yeah. So, so you get thrown out of, if you get thrown out of a youth softball game one day, you'd sell ball game more. It wouldn't be a curse word. I would never say a curse word to it. So what would you say, though, to this umpire that would make you get ejected? It wouldn't be like, oh, you don't even have to say much. You

just keep talking. So if they're like, okay, that's enough. And then you say another, they're like, okay, you need to leave. So it's very, it's a very subtle toss. I almost got tossed last year as a fan because, okay, here to get, apparently I'm protective of my kid. She hits a, you know, we drive like two hours. And you just have to play in this tournament.

It's like 40 degrees outside. She leads off the game. She's left handed. She hits a ball kind of like a liner to the to the third baseman, but like a soft liner. And it sounds terrible. Like it sounds awful. So I, I was like, what, what did they just hit? Well, anyway, the person had a warm up ball. Not a game ball. It was a softie.

She pitched a softie to the softie softball. Yeah. Like a swishy ball. Like a, you know, that you would throw in a simulated bat. You know, so you don't hurt your hitter or whatever if you're on your team. And they called it it out. And I was like, this isn't even a real ball that would have been, you know, probably a 30 miles an hour harder,

you know, or 20 miles an hour harder. It would have been, you know, in the left field. And anyway, so there can be I'm like, I didn't drive two hours to watch my kid hit a practice ball. And the lady was going to throw me out from the stands. I was like, coaching, yeah, with Jamie or just, was it just you? What do you mean, just

me? Was it just you in the stands or were you with? No, no, no, there was, you know, 30, 40 people there. Well, I know, but so, but it was just you and your daughter wasn't. Like a family affair. So yeah, my wife was there. I was, so she saw you get ejected. So I didn't get ejected. But if I said one more word, she was

going to toss me the up. I would have just said, why don't you just say one more word? I would have just, I would have just said, I would have said, okay, what? You know, and gotten ejected. It's very, very, very, very easy. It's your child if you get thrown out. So I've made it a point. Okay. Well, you need to walk away. Then I just

walk away. Well, my kids are in for a lifetime of embarrassment. Mm-hmm. Because see, that's that I'm, I see I'm at the point where somebody says, hey, one more word to me from the stands. I'm going to say one more word and get ejected just for shits and giggles. Right. I don't get it. You have that slow walk in your kids like, oh my god, that's

my dad. And then your dad just got thrown out. And then your kid eventually says, that's not my dad. Yeah. Or says don't come anymore. Okay. I won't. No problem. To go away to get out of it. If you were to get out of having to go to games, right? We just, we just shared a little piece of advice for everybody. For parents, you don't want

to go to games. Just get ejected and barris your kid and then they'll say, don't come anymore. That's it. You're done. You're good. You got your son. You know, you got to spend one day's free all to yourself. Um, no, I got to spend it with you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So you can't get ejected then. That's right. You need the excuse of I have softball games.

That's right. Also, I, I want, I thought of this this week. Um, just a little, can I give you a little piece of advice to everybody or? Oh, absolutely. That's what people listen, Jim. Yeah. For my advice. Um, I want to give some advice to people. Younger kids out there. If you're in middle first, first, first, first, first or third base. Huh? Oh, you nevermind. And

you went to the quarters. What do you mean? What are you going to say? You can talk, you said, if you're a middle in and I put myself into when I was 12 and I was good enough to play the middle in field, yeah. And then I moved to the corners. And I was like, man, wasn't as good anymore. I had to move to the corners.

But go ahead. So if you're, you know how, how I'm going to how you know how pictures and catchers play catcher, catchers play catch with each other. And it happens at all levels, we major league level. Um, middle, if you're a middle in field, this is for kids, and for everybody really high school, college, if you're a middle in fielder, say short stop, second baseman, have

a catch with each other. If you're a third baseman, first baseman, have a catch with each other, if you're an outfielder, have a catch with each other, especially though with middle in fielders, why is that? You get used to, if you try, you try to hit each other in the chest, you try to hit the target, you get used to the way the guy throws, get

used to the way the guy releases, you get used to the spin that comes out of his hand when he's throwing. And that helps you when you're trying to turn a double play, especially when you're trying to turn a turn a double play. Get your footwork where it needs to be at second base based off the throw that you're used to receive. If you're a second

baseman receiving from a short stop, you get used to all the little intricacies and it makes you a lot more comfortable rather than just going in cold and trying to turn a double play with your double play partner up the middle. I think it all starts with having a simple catcher, using that person as your partner, your catching partner day in and day out, short stop,

second base, third base, first base, catcher, catcher, outfield, outfield. Jim, most piece of advice. I'll tell you what, Jim, that was some good. More truth has never been spoken. That is very good information for young people. It all starts with catch. It really does. There's nothing that upsets me more at a practice or a pregame when players can't play catch properly. When they're good players and

they're losing their concentration and you start stretched out a little bit and balls are sailing all over the place. There's nothing. I mean, I put in the bylaw that if you make a bad throw, you have to sprint after that bad throw. I don't make your partner go get that bad throw. You go sprint that and the girls can't stand it. It drives them crazy. Where

do we lose games? Where do all teams lose games? Throwing and catching. If you can be fundamentally throwing and catching. If you don't make any throwing errors and you catch the ball when it's thrown to you, you're going to win way more games. It's that simple. Whether you hit or not, you can't give away outs. What you said is really good. I think that's a great

idea, especially a bit of win-fillers. Instead of playing catch with your friend every single time the same way, play catch with the person that you're going to throw to any game. I wasn't taught this when I was younger. I think it's important that middle infielders are just people in general, young kids in general, baseball and softball learn that playing catches and being able to throw and

play catch and catch it with authority. People don't understand what that means either. You're sorry. You've coaches that youth coaches out there who work in academies. You don't talk about the zeal, you just say hit the guy in the chest. Why are we hitting a guy in the chest? What's the incentive for that? There has to be more incentive when you're playing catch with somebody. There

has to be the ability to catch the baseball or softball with authority. You can't just catch it very nonchalantly. You have to catch it with authority. Learning how to play catch, learning how to catch the baseball often overlooked but very vital pieces of playing the game. You can't just catch the baseball and softball correctly. Yep. That's where it starts. If you can teach that to young

kids, it's priceless at a young age if they can take pride in their catch. But again, with middle infielders, you want to have a catch with one another, get used to those intricacies. So it becomes easier to turn a double play, especially when it's a hard play. You see this with major leaguers, a guy at the Seidelin door going in the hole to his right on

the backhand side. It's a side arms to second base, whoever's, you know, it's Guiorme covering second base. Well, how is lindor at times able to get it to the target? Which again, when you're at second base, trying to turn a double play, that target for the second baseman, shoulders to, I guess, probably the upper ab and the abdomen area. Right. That's the ideal target so they

can get good grip of the baseball and release it very quickly. Now with that said, okay. With lindor to Guiorme, how is it that lindor is able to sometimes misthrow when he's throwing off balance, but Guiorme can still catch, receive the throw and still throw out the guy at first and turn a double play when it looked like it was going to be a really hard

double play because Guiorme knows the release of lindor and what the ball looks like coming out of his hand because they probably play catch together. Oftentimes overlooked. I just thought about this week and I just wanted to bring that up. Yeah. No, it is. It's taking from these of great middle infield combos. You know, and they probably practice everything, right? They're taking down balls. They're flipping

balls from different angles all the time during BP or during early work, you know, at the stadium. So it is. It's a really great middle infielders working together as like a symphony. It's a really beautiful thing when guys can play together for multiple years and they know each other that well. They're able to do things that, you know, other other doos can't. Yeah. I'm going to

tell my kid one day if you want to play the middle infield, go have a catch with another middle infielder. Don't have a catch with the right fucking fielder. I don't want to play the middle infield. That's fine too. You do something else. That's right. I'm just playing the middle infield. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it my little jumbo arrogant way. I'm

just telling you what's best for you. But you don't have to listen to me. You know how people do that. But I don't know. I had this coach once in my youth. I had this coach in my youth once. His name was, he said he tried out for the pirates. His name was Bill. I won't say his last name. But I was in, I was throwing

a bullpen session with him. I was like, 10. His kid's name was Joey. And Joey would always call it. You know how pitters would call time at the play time. Yeah. Or they dig in their whole arm up like hold on, hold on. I remember his father yelled from the stands once. You think you're bad again. He objected his father yelled from the stands once. And

he, we're like 10, 11 years old. He goes, Joey, put your fucking arm down in here. He screams this from down the left field line. All the parents would look at Adam like, like, dude, I love it. So I will say that does, you know, especially now you can't even get out of the box. Like you better get rid of that habit. I'm, I'm all for

that. Get in the box. That's here. Anyway. So I'm still saying sometimes I, you know, I love this pitch clock role because I'm watching it. Now I'm like, God, that game was over in two and a half hours. Now let's go on to the next game. It's like fucking, anyway, this guy was, his name was Bill, right? And I'm throwing a bullpen session or whatever. He's

catching me. And he's saying how he tried out for the fucking pirates and I'm sure he was the excuse of, well, I am a backpull out. You know how everybody. Right. And, and so he's like telling me something. And before I can even respond or even say anything, I wasn't arguing with him. He goes, but, but, you know, if the listen to me, but you don't,

you don't have to listen to me. You don't, you, I'm just like, I'm going to look back on it now. And I'm like, what a fucking idiot. And then I just said to you, I'm going to do that, you know, one day, like, wait, you know, you don't have to listen to me. You're going to be, you're going to be Bob or Bill. Yeah. I'm just

telling you, you want to play the middle end, feel, I know what I'm talking about. But, you know, you don't have to, you know, I have a podcast. Yeah, I have a podcast. I only, I only talk to the best hitting instructor in the country and have worked in the game for so long and he's working the game for so, but, but we don't know what

I don't know what I'm talking about. Don't listen to me. Whatever. All right. Moving on. Let's get in Jeff McNeil here. Mechanical breakdown series, volume 40, the lab Epstein Hitting Podcast Episode 140. And again, reminder, next week we'll be talking about the requirements of a successful coach part two and really dig into the weeds with some technology and some more baseball centric talk as it pertains

to becoming a successful hitting coach. We'll talk about that next week. But talking about Jeff McNeil. I hear this. I'm a lot when analysts are talking about Jeff McNeil's swing and they talk about this with everybody's swing. It seems like everybody puts a good swing on the baseball. That guy really stayed inside the ball. Well, which is very true. I agree. But oftentimes when a guy

stays inside the ball really, really well. He also is in the bad path and in the zone for a really, really long time. And that's the case with Jeff McNeil. I think the best comp for him thinking about this this morning is probably Todd Walker from Red Sox early 2000s, 2003, 2004. Although Jeff McNeil's swing is a little bit shorter than Todd Walker. Todd Walker had

more of a loopy type swing, more of a power type swing. Jeff McNeil does not. But I'll say this about Jeff McNeil. I'll make it short and simple. Before we get into the breakdown. I can watch him hit all day. I think he is our, excuse me. I think he is arguably the best hitter the Mets have in their lineup. I think he is arguably the

best hitter in all of the nationally. Again, the keys for him. He's in the zone. His bat is in the zone for a very long time. He hits. He's a hitter. Like he's, I don't know what round he was drafted or where he came from. You can, you know, we can look that up later. But he's a hitter. He's a guy that likes to hit. He's

trying to, he's not trying to juice everything. He knows what he is. Right. He knows he's, he's a contact guy. And no matter where the pitch is, he's going to find a way to get to it. It's almost like he played, you know, a lot of pepper grown up. He played a lot of bad ball. He's got to go with his buddies, you know, when people

are, you know, we used to play strike out as kids right up against the garage door and a tennis ball. And you were just pretty much swinging it. Everything trying to hit it. And that's what it looks like. He is. He's just kind of an old school guy that probably, you know, didn't take a tunnel. A lessons would be my guess growing up. Right. He wasn't,

you know, he's not on the internet. He didn't, he doesn't change his swing. He never tried to, you know, go with different fads. He's like, I'm just trying to get a barrel on the ball no matter where it's pitched. And it's pretty cool. So let's go ahead and see what happens. Let's go ahead and break this thing down. Let's do it. Mechanical breakdown series. Volume 40.

Yes, sir, breakdown. Here's McNeil on the left here. What we're seeing. And this is the same, the same swing. It's just a graphic on the right. And that graphic is, is done by Hawkeye and MLB Stadium. So it's a really cool view that will dissect here in a second. But let's start. We're going to start on the left. And we're going to look at his timing.

So again, notice is the picture brings his arm up. So it all starts with, you know, being on time, making sure that we're getting going, we're getting our, you know, our weight distributed into our rear leg early, making sure notice how, notice where his hands are. Okay. I have so many players in the online academy as well. I hope you're watching this, you know, who I'm

talking to, okay. And they hide their hands. Okay. So many players hide their hands. You can see he loads them back. Yeah, we can still see the knob of the bat at swing watch. Okay. I have so many players that get their hands and the bat like this behind their chest. Okay. And when that happens, we get trapped. And then our body posture has to change.

Okay. So this is a really good for those of you that trap your hands. This is a great way to start. Start with your hands out over the plate. Okay. And then as you load them and you coil your body. Notice how his body's coiling is his hands go back. And then the shoulders working down and in. Okay. It'll load everything properly. And then you won't

get trapped. Okay. So we're going to now we're going to look at Ron's position. Here's heel plan. Notice his foot angle. We talked about this when we did the. He's only the greatest shortstop ever. The jeeter. The jeeter break down a couple of weeks ago. Notice how he's closed off a little bit. Okay. So he's a guy that closes his stance back off. So his heel

line is now facing to the opposite field. Okay. This is really good for some players. Some players. It's not most. It's good. He starts with an open stance. And he brings it back to closed. Okay. This will keep him from spinning off the pitches. Okay. So his launch position looks great as he goes through. Notice how that knob comes back and faces the picture in this

position. Okay. So knob faces the picture. Now he's going to release the barrel. But when his barrel comes out from his hand. So again, I'm looking right where these arrows are. In his approach position. Notice how the barrel comes in above the ball slightly. So even though this is a home run. His barrel is approaching the ball from above for most of this swing. Okay. Now

we're going to get wild. Okay. So I want you to look at the graphic on the right. Okay. This is this is the same swing. It's a home run. He hit 102 miles an hour. Right. We don't have to hit it 115. Okay. And I don't know if you can see it. But right here it says. Attack angle of 12. He's only swinging up at 12

degrees. But his launch angle was 27 degrees. Okay. So that's a difference of 15. He wasn't swinging up 27 degrees to hit it 27 degrees. He hit the bottom half of the ball. Okay. Now I want you to look because they they gave us the pitch plane coming in here. I believe it was a 94 on our fastball. If we look at the video on the

left. But this purple line is the pitch coming in. And this blue line is his barrel. Okay. It's his barrel path. Right. It's the middle of his bat. His middle or the middle of that. It's his swoosh in there. But that barrel. Notice how it gets right below. It gets to the purple line here deep. But then it gets just like an inch below as he's

coming through contact. Okay. Players that get four inches below are players that foul pitches straight back. Players that swing under pitches. Players that strike out. Once every three times at bat. That's where the hole in the swing is. Okay. You don't have to drop your barrel super deep under the pitch plane here. Okay. All you got to do now if he got to that point. If

he wasn't an inch under that blue line. Okay. So if he wasn't an inch. He would have squared this up and hit a line drive over the second basements. Had it that probably 12 to 14 degrees. Okay. Which is what the pitch was coming in. That's the big thing that that we want to learn from this is he is a flat swing. Right. He doesn't have

a big drop under that purple line. And then come up. He's going to make a lot more solid contact. That is the graphic of somebody. And we put it in there all the time. Right. Like Vlad has, you know, very similar path is that. That's a guy that's going to hit for a higher average. Okay. It's not about. Oh, we're just trying to hit home runs

on everything. You don't have to. You can try to have a flat swing like this. And just stay slightly under the pitch to get it in the air. Okay. Now. If you're 85 pounds, probably not a good idea. Try to hit the ball. Try to launch the ball at 20 degrees. You know, because they're going to catch it if it goes any higher than that. But

as we get older and as we get stronger, then we can start to hit the ball in the air more. Okay. Back to the actual swing, assuming you all are still awake. All right. So now we're looking at his vertical bad angle at contact. Now. Number one. Where's this pitch? This pitch is thigh high, right down the middle of the plate. Okay. What do we hit?

But what balls do we hit? Really well. Mistakes. You have to take advantage of mistakes. We talked about that probably in our first episode way back in 1987. Okay. We talked about not missing the Paul Molleter story. Not missing mistakes hitting mistakes hard. Okay. What's good about him is he could get his bat his hands in the same spot and get his bat vertical angle flatter

at, let's say, 10 degrees and hit a pitch at his belly button. Okay. He can also drop it a little bit more without moving his hands very much. And then we can see that. And get it down here a little bit more to cover a pitch at the bottom of the thighs. Okay. So he's very flexible with his with his swing. Okay. He doesn't just practice

one move. He doesn't just practice one turn or one move or one swing plane or whatever it is. Okay. So anyway, really good. So we're going to see it from the side here. And it's kind of a weird angle from the side. But notice how he clears his his right hip. Now he's a right hand thrower. So this is a tougher move. So typically right handed.

His shoulder. His front shoulder is coming at the same time. Okay. He doesn't have a ton of separation. He's coiled. And then when his foot hits the ground. He's got a little separation. But not nearly as much as, you know, somebody that is left hand dominant. And that's probably why he doesn't hit the ball quite as hard as other people. But he doesn't care. What did

he say? If I hit the ball 30 miles an hour. But it's a base hit on the man. Right. He feels good about that. Okay. So now we're going to fast forward a little bit to this. It's kind of a front side view. So it's not the most beautiful thing. Okay. Beautiful view. But just watch his footwear. You see how closed his front hip is when

he lands. So now you can see that move. This front knee stays closed. His front foot stays closed. His back knee starting to come in to release his hips. Okay. And then as he rolls through, it's just a very lot type swing. He has great extension. He's kind of upright. He looks a little bit like a golfer with his lower body. Okay. But his his front

foot rolling over. So why does his front foot roll over? Because it was closed. Okay. We talked about that with Barry bonds. Okay. If your front foot is closed and you're trying to rotate your hips, your foot's going to give. Okay. The foot's going to give and you're going to kind of roll to the outside of your foot. But notice his consistent extension here. Okay. Like

he gets to the ball. And then he extends through and that barrel. If you look at his power V here, again, it's kind of a wonky ankle angle. The the Metz. I like this angle though. I do like it. All right, Jim. This is the last podcast listeners. Whatever did you just disagree with me, Jim? I did. Sorry. Okay. I'm giving you credit for the angle.

Oh, you are. I didn't even do anything. Okay. So again, we're extending the arms through the power. V is very, very in line. With his his bat is in line with his V, right? So here's the V of his arms. And then that bat's kind of shooting right out the middle of that. Okay. That's what we want to look for. And if we look at the

right. I don't know if it continues. Yeah. It doesn't really. Well, yeah. You can see his bat go through. That's the same part of the swing there. Notice where his his the top bat is on the right hand side. Okay. Probably right about there. So the cool part is you can see how smooth this blue line is on the right. That blue line is his barrel

path. So he could hit a ball. I'm going to mark this up. I'm going to try to zoom in a little bit more because I can. All right. So I'm going to zoom in a little bit more. So this area here, where his barrel path is on that purple line. I mean, even here it's on. Right. So he's on plane. He can really hit a ball

anywhere from there to there. Now, if he hits it back here, he's probably going to just shoot that foul into the dugout. Okay. But this, this is the front of the box here. That's that's going to be his happy zone. All right. So because that contact zone is so big, he's going to make more solid contact. Now we're going to look at this from above. Okay.

We're going to take an above view. This is how his barrel worked. Would you say this is inside the ball? Okay. It's inside the ball here. If you look at his barrel coming from the inside. See how it matches the angle of the plate. This is pretty cool. So here's where it matches. See the pitch losing speed. By the way, this is really cool. This is

what people don't realize. This was, again, if we look here, I'm going to go back. Oh, do I have it? Oh, I may have to zoom out here. Oh, it's not telling us this was a 94-hour pitch. I'm fairly certain of that when I saw it on the original video. Okay. But if you look at this pitch by the time it gets to home plate, you

can see the video starts out. That's where it caps out. So for the time it gets here, it's 88, but it started at 94. People don't really realize that. So the gun takes consideration of the hand. Like how fast is what is the fastest part of pitch? So even though it's 94 there, it's losing eight miles an hour by the time it comes to the plate.

Okay. So there's something you may or may not have known. Okay. But if you look at his barrel path, it's coming from the inside. And then he's releasing the barrel and still able to pull ball. But this is a pitch that was, I guess, it's it shows it maybe one ball. It's like ball five, I would say. But because he stayed on point, maybe he was

a little early. Maybe he wanted to hit it here. I mean, I don't think he did, but you know, he could have still hit that pitch there. Right. That's the key. So a lot of times if somebody's hitting around the ball. What you're going to see instead of the blue line coming from the inside, the blue line is going to kind of come out this way.

And then it's going to come back around this way. So we are barrel comes from the outside a little more. It always starts in here. But what happens is it really, it gets released with the hand. So if we look at that, we're going to just geek out here. This is like a certification breakdown. So some people may love this in someone. So as he comes

here. Okay. As he comes through here. And again, it's not the best view. Even though Jim likes it. We can see his his front forearm is here and his bad is here. So this angle in here is less than 90. Okay. People that hit around the ball, which pretty much every big leagueer does not say I'm trying to stay inside the ball. Of course you do.

That's why you're in the big leagues. Like if you didn't hit inside, if you didn't stay inside the ball, you wouldn't have got out of high school. Okay. But if he, if this barrel starts working out this way and this angle in here gets bigger during this part of the stage, then we're in trouble. So you can see the one is the barrel come out from

his body. Maybe there. Players that hit around the ball. Instead of this position, it'll start to come out when they first start to turn and then that barrel will be on an angle like that. Okay. So that's kind of what, you know, inside or outside. That's when it happens. It happens during rotation. Did they hold that angle with therefore arm in their bat? Or did they

start to release it early? Hence, that's why I'm not a huge fan of throwing the barrel away from you early in the swing to get on plane early. Because that will, if you try to hit a ball out in front or if you're a little early, you really don't have a chance to hit it. So try to keep that out. Be considered a cast. If that

barrel moves away from the head. So anyway, recapping McNeil, he's a hitter. He looks different on almost every pitch. He is not a robot. He is not a just turn and burn guy. He swings down on high pitches. Sometimes he swings up on high pitches. Depending on the situation, depending on if he's trying to drive in runs or he's trying to go on base. And to

me, that's a complete hitter. And as we teach hitters, we want to teach them to do different things. Hey, hit a ground ball here. Hey, hit a fly ball here. Hey, pull this ball. Hey, hit this one the other way. If you can create complete hitters like that and you train their muscle memory and their brains react to different pitches and different situations, then in games,

when you got point four seconds to react. Or less than that actually point to two, two, six seconds, point two, four seconds, something like that. Then it will their body will know what to do because you put them through those different scenarios. That's all I got them. Great job. Great breakdown. Mechanical breakdown series. Volume 40 Jeff McNeil. No, this is not our last podcast. Jake was

Because for the most part, there's fear in there where they're going to want to step away from the plate. And if I can overtrain them stepping in and usually they'll be pretty square and they won't step out anymore. All right. Well, great. This was a really good one. Jeff McNeil. One of the best hitters, I think in all of baseball. I'm glad we got a chance

to break his swing down again. We will be breaking down more gold additions coming up later in the year. And in particular, 10 Griffey Jr. That'll be a lot of fun. We'll do that later in the year. Plus we're going to break down your Don Alvarez. We're going to be breaking his swing down later in the year. As my grandfather used to say, keep be sure

it on. Hold your horse. I can relax. Yeah. Right. Not, not, not keep my shirt on or hold your horses. All right. I've wrapped up today's episode. What do you got coming up with the lab? Anything? How about where people can get cool lab gear? Like this cool hat that I'm wearing there that I wear a weekend and. I like this hat. It's very comfortable. Yeah.

Those are good hats. You're going to have to visit the lab. We do not have a shipping department at the lab. So my apologies there. But, but visit the lab. Visit the lab anytime. Yeah. College Station, Texas, especially if you're within driving distance. Or you can come see me in Denver. I'm kind of actually filling up for the summer. I got a ton of players that

are online academy players that are coming out for usually what we do is two or three days, two to three days. You come out. We train five or six hours over that time. And do some mechanical work. We do some aggression work. We do possibly some K vest work, depending on what you got going on and how old you are. We do some mental training. So

if you're interested, just shoot me a line. Jake at Epstein hitting dot com. And you can email us GMO podcast 21 at Gmail. Anytime. Anytime. The email does not close. There are no hours on the email. And be sure to email Jake and give him your condolences for the avalanche losing in the first round. Ouch. It's off way to go out after winning the Stanley Cup

last year. I'll tell you what. Yeah, that happens, right? It does. It does happen. Next week, requirements, you didn't even watch the series. Don't let don't let Jake. I don't know. I don't I only watch the last two, two. He's two jakes too busy trying to avoid getting ejected at you. This takes a lot of work for me and a lot of patients. It does. All

right. Next week, requirements of a successful hitting coach. Part. Two, that'll be episode 141. Be sure to subscribe. Apple Google Spotify YouTube as well. The lab Epstein hitting podcast YouTube page and we'll talk to you next week. Thank you.