A college baseball player's take on hitting struggles

[CPerk]

I have seen a lot of takes on Twitter about how Vandy can't hit this year and they need a new hitting coach and so on. I am finishing up my final year of college baseball at Cumberland University. I am nowhere near the top-level player Vandy has, but I do understand baseball and hitting. I have been in and around baseball my whole life and played with players who have experienced it all. Teammates who got drafted first round, played in the SEC, played Big 12 and Pac 12, played top tier-JUCO, and even a friend who played at Vandy and is now in the bigs. I have been blessed with a long career and many different perspectives.

Here is what I know regarding hitting struggles:

1. It is REALLY hard to hit at a high level. The tv camera does not do it justice. Watching games in person doesn't really give any insight into how hard these pitches are thrown and how much they're moving. It is very easy to say "lay off the high fastball" or "why do we always swing at sliders in the dirt" when you have not experienced it in person (I am guilty of it as well, and I have seen the kind of stuff they have). I wish I could put into words how difficult it is, I just can't. There are an unbelievable amount of variables that need to go right to even hit the ball, and many more to hit it hard.

2. "The key to being a good hitting coach is recruiting kids who can fu***** hit." I have heard from a few different hitting coaches and have seen it hold its weight. I am not saying our lineup does not have the talent to do well in the SEC; it does. This lineup does look to have less talent than previous years, but all it takes is getting hot at the right time.

3. Hitting coaches are rarely the problem. Hitting coaches do very similar things at all levels of college baseball. One of my best friends played at Arkansas and says their practices were ran very similar to ours. Friends from UC-Irvine, U of Washington, ETSU, Lipscomb, Houston, and top-tier JUCOs have all said the same. As mentioned in point two above, kids at the college level should be able to hit before they get to college. There is not some wealth of knowledge that college hitting coaches are able to use to mold kids into phenomenal hitters. Talent matters.

4. As many of you know, much of hitting is mental. There are so many fundamentals that go into making a good swing that the best way to go about it is off 'feels.' You take cues and try to feel them in your swing. This is largely done in practice and BP, as in an at-bat you don't have time to feel. In a game, you are purely focused on seeing the baseball. Hitters who see the ball well are good hitters. It seems to me like there are only a few Vandy hitters seeing the ball well right now. If these hitters start seeing the ball well and getting some confidence, things will turn around.

I know this was long, but just wanted to provide some insight into the hardest thing to do in all of sports. Hope you like it!

[AirForceDore]

Great post!!! Thank you for the insight and thank you for sharing.

[vandy05]

Interesting take, especially about getting hot hitting at the right time. I'm a complete novice when it comes to baseball, but this idea rings true to me. Something else that strikes me is that we have some top talent that has been recruited over the years, they could wake up and perform really well at any time. Again, novice take, but I look at teams ahead of us in the rankings who are supposedly better than us and I would imagine that many of them have good talent, but perhaps not better talent than we have. There is plenty of time for us to get our ship going in the right direction. Spend the next few weekends warming up and then really hit the accelerator for the final home stretch.

[charlestonalum]

I have only 2 questions
1. It seems like our hitters take a lot of first pitches: is that taught or just part of the process. Also all batters seem to be coached to hold off when the count us 3-0. Is that correct?
2. Our team has overall batting average in the high 200's but with guys in scoring position it is in the very low 200's it seems (could be wrong,,) why is that, if true?

[MrMemorial]

Any thoughts on how often we end up 0-2 in the count and how much of a disadvantage it is to be battling back from disadvantage pitch counts so often?

[CPerk]

I have only 2 questions
1. It seems like our hitters take a lot of first pitches: is that taught or just part of the process. Also all batters seem to be coached to hold off when the count us 3-0. Is that correct?
2. Our team has overall batting average in the high 200's but with guys in scoring position it is in the very low 200's it seems (could be wrong,,) why is that, if true?

Great questions. As it seems you've noticed, the first pitch is often the best one you'll get. Some coaches like for hitters to "see one first" while others want hitters to get into the box ready to hit. I prefer the latter, as a first pitch fastball is what dreams are made of. Pitchers are always looking to throw that first pitch of the at bat for a strike. Almost all batters are instructed to take a 3-0 pitch unless he is an absolute stud and him swinging the bat is much more valuable than taking a walk (think Barry Bonds).

Unfortunately, I can't answer your second question with anything definitive. I'm not sure if it's pitchers locking in mentally or hitters feeling the pressure to perform or an array of stuff. One stat I'd be interested to see is BABIP with RISP, which stands for batting average on balls in play with runners in scoring position. This would help show if we're getting unlucky or just not putting enough balls in play.

[CPerk]

Any thoughts on how often we end up 0-2 in the count and how much of a disadvantage it is to be battling back from disadvantage pitch counts so often?

Getting 0-2 early more than likely is from a few things. Pitchers not afraid to attack, hitters not ready to jump on a fastball, hitters not seeing it well, pitchers with great stuff, etc. Batting averages with 2 strikes are WAY lower than batting averages without.

[MrMemorial]

Any thoughts on how often we end up 0-2 in the count and how much of a disadvantage it is to be battling back from disadvantage pitch counts so often?

Getting 0-2 early more than likely is from a few things. Pitchers not afraid to attack, hitters not ready to jump on a fastball, hitters not seeing it well, pitchers with great stuff, etc. Batting averages with 2 strikes are WAY lower than batting averages without.

Are hitters ever ordered to "take." - ?? (or else)

[HopsLikeHolwerda]

Good discussion here. CPerk, thanks for the insight. As noted, I believe we've profiled hitters poorly over the past few recruiting cycles, and it's finally caught up to us.

As for the taking of pitches, my opinion is that comes from an over-reliance on Analytics. Analytics are great for players that can digest them, and over a long season. College baseball is about 65-70 games, for the best of teams. Which is about 2.5 months of an MLB season. How many times have we seen MLB players have a great "first half" and then trail off after the All Star break. And vice versa; some guys get hot after the break. For Vandy, we don't have that luxury of an extended season for Analytics use to really become normalized. Bottom-line, some of our guys look like they are thinking way too much when they step in the box. Bulger has really been on a tear for a week. To me, he looks like he's just gone back to "see ball - hit ball", which I still believe is the most natural way to hit.

My biggest issue with coaching, and I don't know if it's Baxter or Corbs, is trying to run up pitch counts. It gets us in a hole just about every game. We did the same thing last year as well, and I honestly think it hurt us, despite getting to the Championship Series. The plan is pretty much to see pitches the first time through the lineup. Then learn and attack. That's great if you're facing low-level pitchers. But good pitchers have a plan to attack the second time through a lineup, and great pitchers have a plan for three times through. To me it's not respecting your opponent enough to think they can get you out on the second time through. It is an Analytics-based strategy and Corbs has been eating those up over the last few years. I just think it takes away any chance we have of gaining momentum early, and it definitely puts a strain on your SP to be great early to keep the game close. I don't think they're considering the impact on our own SPs when they run their numbers for offensive game-planning. They didn't have to think about Kumar and Jack. But now, they need to consider how hard it is for a FR like Holton and a new starter like Mac to pitch for 3 innings before getting any run support.

Congrats on your career at Cumberland. Love Coach Hunt and played against his teams a couple times in my college days. Also, have a buddy that's now an assistant coach there (Patrick Bell). Love that staff.

[baseball1234]

The chart, IMHO, is useless because it only reflects balls in play on the matching count. What if a batter swings at the first pitch and misses? The comparison should be between batters who swing at a first pitch and batters who take the first pitch and then to dig deeper, between first strike balls and first strike stikes.

[KudzuLeague]

Excellent post with a lot of good insight that those of us who only watch baseball cannot have.

One thing to bear in mind when it comes to posters on chatrooms, they're not really talking about baseball, they're talking about themselves. They're taking out their own frustrations with their own lives and transferring those frustrations onto the players of the team they identify with. So, a poster who says, why do they keep swinging at pitches in the dirt, probably needs to ask himself something like, why do I keep drinking too much and screwing up at work. But they can't say that, it's too painful, so they get mad at the college kid who is just doing his best.