There are very few coaches of young baseball players who can look at a baseball swing and know that it is a good fundamental swing. Even many high school coaches are not experienced enough to do this. There are some fine technical ingredients that are difficult for an untrained eye to notice. The good news is that anyone can help a player with his swing with a drill.

A common saying I tell hitters is, “It takes perfect fundamentals to hit an outside pitch solidly into the opposite field.” For example, a right-handed hitter might solidly hit a pitch from the outside half of the plate to right field. The position of the hitters hands and barrel of the bat, as well as their timing, must be perfect to continuously propel this ball to the other side. Many hitters hit pitches to the opposite field due to a late swing or due to incorrect fundamentals. However, to consistently hit a pitch “the other way” on a ball that is in the outer half of the plate, a perfect fundamental swing is needed. This is very important because the odds of solidly hitting the outer halftone when pulled are not good. Tossing a ball is hitting a ball to the same side of the field as the batter’s side of the field in the batter’s box. Believe it or not, a ball fouled to the opposite side of the field or straight back is often a better sign of a good fundamental swing than when this pitch is put into play to the side of the field. A foul ball is positive on a difficult course.

Coaches can get an indication of a good fundamental swing by noting which direction players hit balls depending on the location of pitches. Players should work on the correct baseball swing by working on throwing outside pitches to the opposite field with the following drill.

punch out

Very simply put a batting tee on the outside half of home plate making sure the batter remains in his normal position at the plate, just like in a game. Have hitters work on line hits in the opposite direction until they can do it repeatedly and until it becomes very natural. A continuation of this drill would be to do the same for balls flipped by a coach to this part of the plate and continue batting practice in the outer halffields.

As mentioned, it takes great fundamentals to do this consistently in this field. Hitters will find that as they become more consistent with this pitch, their swing will be correct at all pitch locations.

This drill is also another way to analyze a player’s swing to see if it’s a good fundamental swing, especially for people who don’t have an “eye” for trained hitting instructors. Players who can’t consistently throw this pitch downfield (8 or 9 times out of 10) need to improve the fundamentals of the baseball swing. Also, due to the use of aluminum bats and their fear of hitting hitters, pitchers throw more pitches “away” from hitters, so getting better on outside pitches can only help hitters’ batting averages.