Practical Application of Blast Motion

“ Technology should aid the teacher, not replace the teacher”

The last few posts I have tried to make it clear that over simplifying your training ecosystem is crucial to a hitters development. The average Division 1 hitter will have access to a plethora of tech. Blend that with their hitting coach talking about their philosophy and you have an inundated hitter that will never perform subconsciously. Keep in mind, the more conscious we are of a movement the less likely our brain will call on that movement in a game environment. This isn’t to say that technology isn’t a useful resource, it can be huge in expediting development and providing objective feedback.

One analogy I like to use when talking about technology is driving a car. When driving you are focused on the steering wheel, gas pedal, and brakes. If you were driving in New York City traffic and someone told you to pay attention to the tire pressure, battery life, turning radius, and RPM you would become overwhelmed and perform at a lower clip. All of the data is very important we just have to be careful how we communicate it with a player trying to execute a task.

That being said, within the next 10 years I assume EVERY hitter will have a knob sensor on their bat. I wanted to use this article to give some insight into the metrics that I deem as important. Keep in mind, every hitting coach is different. It is my opinion that you simply cannot pay attention to EVERYTHING the sensor provides or one fix will lead to another fix and so on.

Here we go, please keep in mind I said “practical”. Therefore, I will attempt to keep this simple. Also, these metrics are completely useless if you don’t know how to communicate them to your hitters in a simplified manner and implement them into their individual programming.

The metrics I will discuss are:

• Early Connection
• Vertical Bat Angle
• Connection at Impact
• Bat Speed
• Attack Angle

Early Connection

Early connection for me is a no-go. As previously stated, I try to stay objective as it pertains to tech. I personally teach a scap load so my hitters will have connection later in the sequence due to less internal rotation. However, for the coaches that teach more internal rotation they will see earlier connection because the barrel will flatten as the hitter unwinds the shoulders. Early connection will lead to lower Vertical Bat Angle. Those hitters will have easier time hitting up in the zone and will struggle to hit in lower quadrants due to lower vertical bat angle. Early connection will also encourage a hitter to hit the ball deeper in the zone leading to more roll overs out front. Purely anecdotal but I believe early connection leads to bat drag and long swing arch. Gary Sanchez is a prime example of this, he talks about when he gets his bat “flat” he struggles with velo.

Vertical Bat Angle

D.K. Willardson has done an immense amount of research into the benefits of a higher vertical bat angle. Perhaps the most important is the effect VBA has on batted ball spin (will talk about this in another post). A hitters goal should be to maintain their vertical bat angle as long as they can once established. This will ensure they stay in the zone. Typically, a players vertical bat angle will be greater as the ball gets lower an more inside. This is due to the player attempting to keep the ball fair and is directly related to connection at impact and attack angle. When you track VBA it is important to track it per quadrant to give the player context to the readings.

The graphic above is a great illustration as to the benefit of VBA. If the ball is to move up or down we can still find the center. With a flat bat the percentage of mishits will drastically increase. This is called launch angle volatility and will be discussed later.

The image above shoes the relationship between Vertical Bat Angle and Connection at impact. Vertical bat angle is the bat metric, connection at impact more the posture measurement. Pretty rudimentary but we want the shoulders to match the angle of the bat.

The photo above will give more context to connection at impact (side bend) and Vertical Bat Angle. At the youth level reduced VBA is typically path related (rollovers etc.) but at the MLB level it is typically side bend related. Machado on the right hits the ball with extremely high spin rates, this is mostly due to the lower VBA and side bend. He is notorious for a high Infield Fly Ball Rate. On the other hand Votto on the left has the lowest Infield Fly Ball Rate and you can see the difference in the VBA.

Bat Speed

Hitting coaches for years have been obsessed with bat speed due to the thought that it increase Exit Velocity. While this is true the bat/ball collision has much greater effect on Exit Velocity and performance. I tend to use the bat speed function for making sure the hitter is keeping consistent bat speed in multiple quadrants. For example, if a hitter is losing bat speed on the outer third you may look at video and see due to early rotation they are compensating with a push or they are not connected.

Connection at Impact

This is more of a “posture” metric for me. We know the importance of side bend as it pertains to the barrel staying the the zone. I like to say posture turns to tilt and then side bend. If during the sequence the player rotates across the zone the connection is typically less than 90. Also, as the ball gets lower in the zone if the player uses the hands to adjust the reading will be less than 90. Just a few examples. The photo above of Machado and Votto is pretty revealing.

Attack Angle

Probably the most misunderstood and important metric in hitting. We all have heard Arod neglect the term “launch angle” without having any context to what it actually means. The average descent of a MLB pitch is 8–12 degrees based on the type of pitch. It would only make sense for us to attempt to match plane right? This is true but we also know that the optimal launch angle is between 20–30 degrees. So how do we achieve that? Number one we need to pay attention to the factors that effect launch angle; Attack Angle and Bat/Bat Ball collision. If we can increase VBA in order to make flush contact then we can work on Launch Angle consistency or Attack Angle consistency. Before I jump into the next point it is important to remember that Attack Angle is subject to contact point, deeper will be steeper, out front will be more upward. Typically before training attack angle you should factor in the players Exit Velocities. If a player falls in the higher EV bucket you will accept a higher Attack Angle. Yes the player will spend less time on plane however due to the high EV you want to make sure when they barrel it, it leaves the yard. A lower EV you would want to train an attack angle that stays on plane longer. Also, tracking AA in the back of the zone and front can be extremely important. If they player has an extremely steep attack angle in the back and extremely positive out front the player will have a trough over the zone resulting in HIGH swing and miss. I personally believe this is the importance of turning the barrel, the attack angle will be positive deeper, we can save that for another post.

As it pertains to Launch Angle my simplistic approach is that we try to limit volatility. This kind of overlaps with Attack Angle but we want to make sure our launch angle lives within a certain “range”.

Again, this is all data that doesn’t necessarily need to be communicated to your player, it just verifies your “hunch”. In fact, I still think video is king, that’s just me though.