Fayetteville Regional thread—-Baseball

[TC]

Slavens used to do this often, flaring his head before contact and disrupting his barrel path.

Diggs does it all the time. Ditto for Aloy and Souza. Stovall had a penchant for it as well on those long loads and big cuts. Sandlot had a tendency to swing out of his shoes (he had several AB's this regional where he went to a knee).

"Keep your head in there and eye to the ball" is shit they're teaching in 8U.

I see it on our 10u team a lot. What's interesting is I mostly see it creep up in our best hitters, boys you might not expect it with. And just from throwing BP a couple of times a week at them, I notice it's usually the favorite pitch for that particular hitter, and rarely the balls on the outskirts of the zone. Why?

My bullshit dad-coach theory is that of the pitches a kid might swing at, the ones on the outskirts of the zone are given a greater level of concentration since he believes its a strike, hence why he decides he's gonna swing. But since it's not where he loves it, he tracks it for X milliseconds longer. So when contact is made if his head was pointing in the right direction, it's likely his eyes were too.

With a hitters favorite pitch though I think things change. He's so confident with that pitch that he's swinging with more muscle memory, and less concentration, so he (often to his demise) has his head pointing in the right direction, but his eyes are "out ahead," and looking for the ball coming off the bat.  That no bueno.

Cage hitting is really good for breaking/relearning this. It naturally brings the hitters focus into nothing but the pitch because after 2 or 3 good ball strikes kids loose interest in where the ball lands (or how far it goes), which is at the heart of the issue here.

I have a really good friend who's a great golfer. My uncle Bob Teas was a pro. I loathe the game. Whenever I play with either of them, they have to remind me around every other hole to keep my eyes on the back of the ball THRU the swing, and not try to "follow" the ball with my eyes immediately after contact like I love to do.

[HOGSRUNWILD]

I see it on our 10u team a lot. What's interesting is I mostly see it creep up in our best hitters, boys you might not expect it with. And just from throwing BP a couple of times a week at them, I notice it's usually the favorite pitch for that particular hitter, and rarely the balls on the outskirts of the zone. Why?

My bullshit dad-coach theory is that of the pitches a kid might swing at, the ones on the outskirts of the zone are given a greater level of concentration since he believes its a strike, hence why he decides he's gonna swing. But since it's not where he loves it, he tracks it for X milliseconds longer. So when contact is made if his head was pointing in the right direction, it's likely his eyes were too.

With a hitters favorite pitch though I think things change. He's so confident with that pitch that he's swinging with more muscle memory, and less concentration, so he (often to his demise) has his head pointing in the right direction, but his eyes are "out ahead," and looking for the ball coming off the bat.  That no bueno.

Cage hitting is really good for breaking/relearning this. It naturally brings the hitters focus into nothing but the pitch because after 2 or 3 good ball strikes kids loose interest in where the ball lands (or how far it goes), which is at the heart of the issue here.

I have a really good friend who's a great golfer. My uncle Bob Teas was a pro. I loathe the game. Whenever I play with either of them, they have to remind me around every other hole to keep my eyes on the back of the ball THRU the swing, and not try to "follow" the ball with my eyes immediately after contact like I love to do.

When I first started playing, an older gentleman that I was paired up with at razorback told me a valuable lesson and one that has helped me be a "Decent" golfer over the years.  I say decent as it mean just that, not good but decent for someone that doesn't play too often.  He said your job is to keep your eye on the ball and hit it, our job is to watch where it goes.  That stuck with me for some reason 30+ years later and I usually ask the people I'm playing with to watch where my ball goes and I do the same for them.  Simple thing, but it helped me to just concentrate on the ball and not where it goes.

Might help baseball players too as it doesn't matter where it goes, you hit it and you run like fucking hell.  First base coach will help you track it and whether to go for 2 or not, then when you make the turn you can pick up the ball and such.

[Son of Spam]

Hand/eye coordination. Eye on the ball all the way to the bat. I sure didn't look like our guys were being taught that this year. Another thing I noticed was that most of our "hitters" were swinging for the fence every time, when we just needed to make good contact and maybe get a single. Like someone said, a couple of guys were swinging from their knees. And we swung at a lot of balls in the dirt. We just weren't good at the plate. And as far a golf, the other guys usually lose mine as it goes into the woods.

[HOGSRUNWILD]

Hand/eye coordination. Eye on the ball all the way to the bat. I sure didn't look like our guys were being taught that this year. Another thing I noticed was that most of our "hitters" were swinging for the fence every time, when we just needed to make good contact and maybe get a single. Like someone said, a couple of guys were swinging from their knees. And we swung at a lot of balls in the dirt. We just weren't good at the plate. And as far a golf, the other guys usually lose mine as it goes into the woods.

I always find mine right in the edge of the fairway...it is like a miracle 

[Son of Spam]

I always find mine right in the edge of the fairway...it is like a miracle 

Mine usually stays near the cart path. That way I don't have far to go to pick it up.

[Show-Me Hog]

Despite Moneyball, the eye test is still a real thing. We won games, but we didn't look good. We only looked good due to pitching. Our hitting never looked good, not once the whole year. Then when in a simple regional your pitching gives up 9, 7, and 6, then your hitting looks like what it looked like. Caca.

[DirkPiggler]

Despite Moneyball, the eye test is still a real thing. We won games, but we didn't look good. We only looked good due to pitching. Our hitting never looked good, not once the whole year. Then when in a simple regional your pitching gives up 9, 7, and 6, then your hitting looks like what it looked like. Caca.

Our hitting really hasn't looked good since the 2021 SEC tournament, save for a blip at the end of 2022. 

[FNG]

In my (worthless) opinion, "keeping your eye on the ball" is much more important in baseball than in golf because, in baseball, the ball is obviously in constant motion.

The golf ball is stationary--just innocently sitting there minding its own business. Theoretically--if a golfer's setup (stance/ball position, grip, and posture) and swing are consistent--the ball simply gets in the way of the clubhead just before the swing path's low point every time.

The oft-repeated "keep your head down and your eyes on the golf ball" is good advice but more so to keep the golfer in posture and thus avoiding early extension.

On the other hand, if your golf swing is as inconsistent as mine you can look at any damn thing you want to and it won't make a bit of fucking difference.     

[Feral]

Despite Moneyball, the eye test is still a real thing. We won games, but we didn't look good. We only looked good due to pitching. Our hitting never looked good, not once the whole year. Then when in a simple regional your pitching gives up 9, 7, and 6, then your hitting looks like what it looked like. Caca.

DVH made a comment in his last presser that we looked worn out.

Basically said nearly all of our conference games were close (even our midweeks at times), and we we never blew anybody out and never got blown out.

When you are continually in close games in baseball either way you never have the opportunity to breathe, and the types of low scoring games we were in ultimately wore our pitching staff out. Even getting blown out is a good thing sometimes in baseball because you can just pack it in and have somebody in the bullpen be the sacrificial lamb and eat innings.

Even Hagen wore down. His starts and innings were always close because he got virtually no run support, so he had to lock in and bear down. You wonder if those stressful innings wore him down moreso than if we'd had 5 or 6 run leads in his starts over the course of the season.

[Hogworth Ballington III]

I see it on our 10u team a lot. What's interesting is I mostly see it creep up in our best hitters, boys you might not expect it with. And just from throwing BP a couple of times a week at them, I notice it's usually the favorite pitch for that particular hitter, and rarely the balls on the outskirts of the zone. Why?

My bullshit dad-coach theory is that of the pitches a kid might swing at, the ones on the outskirts of the zone are given a greater level of concentration since he believes its a strike, hence why he decides he's gonna swing. But since it's not where he loves it, he tracks it for X milliseconds longer. So when contact is made if his head was pointing in the right direction, it's likely his eyes were too.

With a hitters favorite pitch though I think things change. He's so confident with that pitch that he's swinging with more muscle memory, and less concentration, so he (often to his demise) has his head pointing in the right direction, but his eyes are "out ahead," and looking for the ball coming off the bat.  That no bueno.

Cage hitting is really good for breaking/relearning this. It naturally brings the hitters focus into nothing but the pitch because after 2 or 3 good ball strikes kids loose interest in where the ball lands (or how far it goes), which is at the heart of the issue here.

I have a really good friend who's a great golfer. My uncle Bob Teas was a pro. I loathe the game. Whenever I play with either of them, they have to remind me around every other hole to keep my eyes on the back of the ball THRU the swing, and not try to "follow" the ball with my eyes immediately after contact like I love to do.

This sounds a lot like scripts and schemas. In CogSci we learn about how the brain develops these things that are intended to make our cognition more efficient. If something is similar to something we've experienced before, our brain tells us it's the same thing (like instinctively and subconsciously jumping to a conclusion based on information at hand). For the most part, this works well and streamlines energy use and speeds up cognition. However, when something violates these schemas/scripts (like a ball dropping out of the zone when we expected it to be like the 10 pitches that came before it that presented with the same arm motion and initial location) it can gum up the works.

It's hard to rewire the brain when these are naturally hardwired in. It goes back to the whole top-down vs bottom-up cognitive processing and trying to force a switch between the two.

[TC]

I think it was in the late 80's there was a study done which claimed that over a certain velocity it's technically impossible to "keep your eye on the ball" the entire time. It also had something to do with the angle of the batter and trying to track the ball the entire way to the plate.
You can stand on 1st or 3rd and track it the entire time, but trying it from the batters box is technically impossible according to the study.
Could be BS tho I don't know

[The Whyte Boar]

Apparently you could write a three digit number on a ball with an ink pen in normal sized handwriting and have a pitcher pitch that ball to Ted Williams and he could tell you what the number was.

[Son of Spam]

DVH made a comment in his last presser that we looked worn out.

Basically said nearly all of our conference games were close (even our midweeks at times), and we we never blew anybody out and never got blown out.

When you are continually in close games in baseball either way you never have the opportunity to breathe, and the types of low scoring games we were in ultimately wore our pitching staff out. Even getting blown out is a good thing sometimes in baseball because you can just pack it in and have somebody in the bullpen be the sacrificial lamb and eat innings.

Even Hagen wore down. His starts and innings were always close because he got virtually no run support, so he had to lock in and bear down. You wonder if those stressful innings wore him down moreso than if we'd had 5 or 6 run leads in his starts over the course of the season.

I think that after about the third or fourth game I posted that we were going to be in a lot of one run games this year. I could tell right then from our lack of hitting. And I never believed for one minute that we were ever the #1 team in the nation. Pitching can only carry you so far and even the best pitchers are going to have an off day or two. Our hitting (or lack thereof) screwed us all year. I told my wife after about the third game that we needed to get our hitters some of those glasses that make things larger to wear while hitting.

[Son of Spam]

Apparently you could write a three digit number on a ball with an ink pen in normal sized handwriting and have a pitcher pitch that ball to Ted Williams and he could tell you what the number was.

If Phil Niekro was throwing that knuckle ball, you could probably read all the lettering on it.

[The Whyte Boar]

If Phil Niekro was throwing that knuckle ball, you could probably read all the lettering on it.

True.

Have you guys ever tried to play catch with someone who could really throw a knuckle?  We used to have this kid in legion who could do it and it would get so bad that you would want to go down and knock him up side the head to make him stop. 

[TC]

Apparently you could write a three digit number on a ball with an ink pen in normal sized handwriting and have a pitcher pitch that ball to Ted Williams and he could tell you what the number was.

Lots of stories like that...

Supposedly Stan Musial had a "dent" on the barrel of his wooden bat from hitting the ball in the same spot on the bat every time. He also refused to go to the movie theater because he thought it would effect his eye sight and hurt his hitting.

[Son of Spam]

True.

Have you guys ever tried to play catch with someone who could really throw a knuckle?  We used to have this kid in legion who could do it and it would get so bad that you would want to go down and knock him up side the head to make him stop. 

Bob Uecker said the best way to catch one was to let it quit rolling and then go pick it up.

[Spiderham]

Running off Dave Van Horn would be the dumbest move this athletic department has ever made, and that's in a program known for catastrophic blunders. 

That move would be Chad-esqe.

[The Whyte Boar]

Some light criticism of Dave is warranted.  But if we ran him off, he would probably take another job and win three championships in a row.  That would be very Arkansas.

[HogOfWar]

Some light criticism of Dave is warranted.  But if we ran him off, he would probably take another job and win three championships in a row.  That would be very Arkansas.

Wasn't the same said of Muss not too long ago?