Welcome back to the Swing Smarter Hitting Training podcast, where science meets the swing and parents, coaches, and athletes finally get answers that work in the real world. Today's guest needs no introduction, but he's getting one anyway. Joining us again is the one and only Perry Husband, the creator of Effective Velocity, a revolutionary approach that's reshaped how elite hitters and pitchers understand timing, power, and pitch recognition. From influencing MLB MVPs to training top college softball programs like Oklahoma, Perry's research has made him one of the most trusted voices in performance analytics. And in this episode, part three of our powerhouse series, we go deep, real deep.
We're breaking down why just swing hard is bad advice, why Mike Trout loses 30 miles per hour of exit velocity on certain pitches, and how the wrong hitting mechanics are sabotaging young athletes even when they're copying the pros. Whether you're a parent of a 10 u baller or coaching varsity hitters, this episode will shift how you evaluate success at the plate. So buckle up. This is the episode where we dismantle myths, decode data, and reveal how to build a swing that's not just powerful in the, it's provable. Let's get into it.
Hello, and welcome to part three with Perry Husband and I. We're gonna be doing many parts, but it's many of of more parts. But we're we're continuing on the idea. First, let me welcome you to the show, Perry, before I go into the intro. Hey.
It's always always always a pleasure to be here. And so we're we're we're in part three of at the beginning of the instructor saying, in a mocking tone, saying to the opposing instructor or hitter, hey. If your instructor is teaching you exit velocity mechanics, ask him why or ask her why in a mocking tone. This isn't a friendly tone. This isn't a yeah.
Ask them why they're teaching that. It's not what it is. That so we're we're continuing on part three. Today, we're gonna be doing pretty much a lot of screen share. So for those that are listening on podcast, we're gonna do our best to try and explain what's going on on the screen share.
So for those on podcast aren't watching this on YouTube or or whatnot. But if you are watching this on podcast, I should have a link to the video, the YouTube video in the in the show notes or whatnot. So if you wanted to see actually what what Perry's doing, what I'm doing, then you can go down and click that video. But this is part three. We're gonna be really going more into that, talking about just giving examples.
Perry's gonna give a bunch of examples which are interesting. We were just talking about Mike Trout, and and Perry, you wanna pick up there on on exit velocities up and inverse down in a way? Yeah. I did a study, like, a five year study of him. And when you look at at at Mike Trout, he has that philosophy that that most most guys have, which is, he's gonna get extended on pitches away and down.
And he when the pitch is on its way in, the kind of the, I would say, the go to default mode in Major League Baseball is to pull the hands in and try to get the barrel closer, you know, to to you so that you can buy yourself some time on the fastball. And bear, bending that front elbow significantly, maybe, like, even in a 90 degree bend. Yeah. To try to to try to buy time by getting creating space between you and the baseball. Mhmm.
Instead of getting out there and getting it fully extended two feet out in front of home plate of at least 18 inches in front of home plate, the the the primary default mode is to try to get extended on the outside fastball, but anything that's on the inside, just pull the hands in, pull the barrel in, and try to buy yourself some time. Right? Mhmm. Which is great. But the league average is 84 miles an hour in the up and in box of the strike zone on fastball exit velocity.
Mhmm. On middle up and middle in, it's about 87. On the diagonal, it's about 93, which is league average pitch speed. Mhmm. And then middle away and down in middle, it's 96.
And then it's, like, 91 down and away extreme in the down and away box. So in Mike Trout's case, he is 73 miles an hour up and in. He doesn't lose a little bit. He loses 30 miles an hour over that period. And then in the middle up and middle inbox combined, so that's a third of the strike zone on fastballs only, his exit velocity was, just over 80 miles an hour.
So think about that for a second. It's a hundred and two average down and away and down in middle. For Mike Trout. In middle away. Yeah.
Mhmm. In those in that third of the strike zone, he absolutely destroys baseballs that are fastballs. When he gets fully extended with that front arm, which is getting fully extended with the front arm versus the chicken wing bin 90 degrees up and Right. Now I'm not saying you can't pull your hands in and hit a homer because it happens every once in a while. Guys are okay at doing it.
And, again, when you're big enough to get away with being at 70% of your max and hit a homer Aaron Judge. Yeah. But but let's just say, what are we doing here? You know what I mean? What what what what are guys like you and I doing talking about mechanics?
And from my perspective, it's about trying to help kids. Kids that go up to the plate and try to perform what these big league guys are doing, they're gonna hit the ball 38 miles an hour, x velocity. They're gonna pop up balls left and right. They're gonna strike out. They're gonna swing and miss.
They're gonna foul tip it. It just is a very poor method to try to perfect. So what I think you and I are talking about is when you're when you're talking about teaching kids, you have to look at the pure version of of things and say, if you go after this, like, if you copy, Ken Griffey junior swing, he's producing on a lot of levels. Right? He's doing a lot of things.
High production of of squaring balls up. You know what I mean? And so that's the kind of model that I wanna use where an Altuve who's pound for pound hitting the ball ridiculously hard. So if I'm gonna look at Aaron Judge versus Altuve and and say, okay. I'm gonna I got an eight year old.
Which swing am I gonna teach my eight year old? Come on. There's no there's not even a comparison pound for pound. I'm gonna take a swing that's more efficient. Mhmm.
So the I think that's a big point. I think you and I are trying to get the point across that there is a better set of mechanics to produce a more solid contact, b harder contact because that is that's king of all things when it comes to hitting is exit velocity. It is the number one number, and I don't care what anybody says. It's not even close. Mhmm.
When that when that batting average goes up five miles an hour, it is a huge increase in batting average, like a 50 points. Mhmm. You go from 90 to 95 in exit velocity, and I think it's a 50 or a 70 points jump. And the slugging percentage goes right with it, and the home runs goes right with it. The second year exit velocity goes up, everything changes.
So if Judge, who averages around 78% of his max, if he were to increase that number to where he hits more balls in play at a slightly higher exit velocity, guess what would happen? He he would hit 80 homers or 90 homers Mhmm. Or a hundred homers. So he he's taking a very inefficient model and applying it and having success. But, again, this is another major point.
How do you define success? Mhmm. You know, is it the biggest kid in little league having the ugliest swing you've ever seen, but he hits a homer because how can he not? Because he's stronger than everybody by 20%. Mhmm.
You know what I mean? So I think that point is super important to make is we're talking in terms of what is the best mechanic, what is the most efficient mechanic, what produces the most power, And and is it repeatable and provable? And the answer to all those questions are or that the the last one is yes. It is very provable because all you gotta do is test it. Right.
And that's and I think that's the problem that people are having and so is a big name. Big name. Big name. And so that is in itself a qualifier or credibility indicator. But you have to use a little bit more discernment, which I think we've learned the the value of discernment and critical thinking over the last few years.
Like you said, you got a guy who's, like, judge six eight, six nine versus Altuve who's, like, five six. So if you look at overall According to him, five five. Five five. Yeah. Yeah.
Because I'm He he does five five, one fifty five. Yeah. He does he does the opposite. Normal guys, they they they lie and say they're taller and they weigh more, but he's do it going the other way so that, you know, he he kinda lives in that that sphere of I'm the small guy, you know, look what I'm doing type of thing. And and, cheating aside, right, the the, knowing what signs are coming and stuff.
I mean, we have to look at this. We have to kinda take a lot of that out, you know, just a study on that, by the way. Did you? Yeah. I was paying super close attention to that series because I was helping Brent Uh-huh.
Strom, who was their pitching coach. Mhmm. And number one, it was only at home. Number two, everybody else was doing it too. Number three Mhmm.
Every not not just the Astros, by the way, those listening. Just the Astros, but everybody else in the league. Yeah. Yeah. Everyone who had that capability was using it.
Trust me. Yep. And and so it's like, what what normally happens when you do a study of hard hit balls is around 10% of hard hit balls, and it's almost always 10 down to eight sometimes, up to 11 very rarely. But most of the time, it's 10% or 9% of the hard hit balls are happen on the hardest pitches to the hardest combinations, which is fastball up and in, slider out of a tunnel, change up out of a tunnel. When they have six miles an hour between them and they're coming out out of a tunnel, that's when they're EV efficient.
Right? Mhmm. And normally, the hard hit ball rate on those, the the the it happens about 10% of the time. With the Astros, it happened about 13% of the time. Mhmm.
So what my take on that is is that they just did everything normal, except there was some help, there was some enhancement of about three or 4%. So that's the number that I would apply to it as to how it helped them. Mhmm. Now granted when they know a slider's coming, it's way better than knowing a fastball's coming. Mhmm.
Because fastball just is is can be as we know, 95 can be 90 or it can be a hundred depending on where it's at. Yep. But they were still late on a hundred. They rarely turned on on really hard to hit fastballs. So, anyway, whatever that's worth But look at the but look at that, though.
So, like, if you take this in inferior swing model where they're not worried about ball exits because it actually exploits the inferiorness of the model itself. Right? And the swing is up. It is up, up, up. Like, I think in part two, you're talking about I love the metaphor.
I've been using it with my hitters, but you got a you got a speedboat coming across the water and you're shooting it. It's like you're shooting a a a missile from the bottom, a torpedo. Right? And so you got this is the ball. This is the barrel, and you got the ball coming up here at two to three degrees down up in the zone, and you got a torpedo barrel that's coming up here.
And it has to be perfectly timed in order to get it. So when you got an upswing model, I don't care if you know a fastball is coming. If it's up in the zone, middle up of the zone, you're gonna have a hard time getting on top of that anyway even though you know it's coming. Yeah. And if you're not training to get above the ball, with that rise effect and you're not training to add the speed, you're not hitting that up and in fast ball anyway.
And they didn't. Yeah. They didn't execute on up and in fast balls like normal. Right? Like, so so if you're actually gonna look at it scientifically, I'm I don't I don't buy into the whole concept of cheating in the first place because, in fact, I got a call and said, what would you do?
And I said, why do you need to cheat? There is absolutely no reason to cheat because they're telling you what they're gonna throw anyway. If you look at a picture through an EV lens, they're gonna make multiple, multiple mistakes with crossover speeds Mhmm. Bad visuals. So if you just do your homework and you look at every picture through an EV lens, it is very easy to come up with sometimes two or three different game plans where you're gonna get a bunch of pitches to hit that you can be a % certain that they're gonna happen.
That's a good point. That's a good point. For example, you know what? I think we called it the Dubront because, Felix Dubront, who was a great pitcher but he would throw 96, and he would throw it up and in a four seamer. But he would also throw a sinker off of that, and that sinker was just a couple miles an hour slower.
Right? So to a right handed batter, ninety six up and in is one zero one, one zero two. And that sinker at 93 is really 88 middle away or 89. And so he's got eighty nine and one zero two, one zero one. And so it's a brilliant combination.
But to a lefty hitter, that fastball up and away is 96, and that sinker is 96 EV miles an hour. Mhmm. So he's actually thank you. Because you're throwing me two pitches out of the same tunnel, and they're both running into my barrel if I sit on the right pitch. Right.
If I'm sitting up and away fastball, I get a two for one that day. Mhmm. Because I don't care which one of those you throw because the sinker is gonna run-in towards me, but you slow it down enough to where it matches my bat path. Mhmm. I don't even need to recognize it.
So that's happening all the time. I'm watching it right now with the Orioles. They've got a the or the, the Astros have a young kid that throws 97 up and away to lefties. 92 cutter in. Guess what?
Thank you. That's that's like a happiest day ever is when they when they give you two pitches for one. But there's a there's a bunch of other things that like that that happen. So that's another major point that we need to make, which is mechanics aside, the fact that we're still arguing about mechanics is utterly ridiculous. Because number one, you can test every element under under multiple circumstances.
Mhmm. So while your philosophy of sitting on your back leg and waiting for the ball to show up, while that helps you on off speed pitches, it crushes you on fastball up and in. Mhmm. I did a mock up of, like, if I were a pitcher facing Aaron Judge, and I wanted to be EV efficient, and I was right handed. So I took the average pitcher in in Major League Baseball, Ninety three plus fastball.
K? So that's league average is 93. Yep. But the but guys are throwing 97, 90 eight all the time. Mhmm.
But let's just you just take 93 plus, and you take fastballs up and in, sliders away, curveballs down and away, change ups in. I think the numbers were he he never hit over 200 against any of those pitches. Mhmm. And he had only one or two homers this year on that combination of pitches. So in other words, how does Aaron Judge do against the hardest pitching?
Answer, not very well. So because that philosophy of staying on your back leg, it has a big, big, big hole in it. And and if you know what you're doing on the mound, you exploit that. So what do big league pitchers do? Let's just throw fastballs down in a way where it's gearing towards.
We're trying to minimize the damage. How's that working out? It's like a conspiracy. Right? It's like the big league.
We're trying to help them out. I don't I don't understand it. I I honestly think that sometimes that that Major League Baseball said, hey, man. We can't let this get out of out of whack. So you pitchers need to, like, curtail it a little bit and bend over backwards to help our hitters hit the ball hard because that's what brings people into the ballpark.
Right. Butts and seats. Yeah. It's, it's like a it's a weird dynamic. It's hard for me to imagine.
I hate watching baseball on a regular basis. It just like as a fan, it's very hard to watch. It's hard to watch college baseball. It's hard to watch professional baseball because the sequencing is like, it's like if you were a a master chess player, not I don't wanna that sounds arrogant saying that, but if you're a master chess player and you're watching a bunch of of young kids playing chess that have no idea what they're doing, it would be kinda hard for you to watch. Right?
Because you'd see, like, ah, nope. Slap my head. Yeah. Slap my head. Yeah.
Don't do that. Oh, no. Not there. Landmine. Landmine.
Landmine. Landmine. I beat you in two moves if you do that. You know what I mean? You know what we gotta do, Perry?
We gotta figure this out. The gamers do this all the time. My my kids watch some of these YouTubers, and they're they get they're playing a game. Like, the main screen is playing a game, and then it's you and me would be up. I would love I would love to be able to watch a game with you.
Like, watch a game. Yeah. Discord. Where I can watch a game with you, and we could have our our here, and we could just talk right through the game. And you could I know they let us do that in real time.
We'd have to do it on delay. Because I don't think you can you can you can do a stream. Well We don't have to do it on real time. No. We just record it and and do it that.
I think it are we able to do that? Yeah. Like, if we if you recorded a game and then just played it, like, right after the game's over Uh-huh. You just can't do it while the game's playing. No.
No. No. Not live. But we could I I think that would be fun to I mean, we don't have to do the whole game because that might take that'd be a long video. But Yeah.
Discord's very cool because you can have a bunch of people on it too. Mhmm. And you can have a live stream, but you could have two or three of us on it once. Mhmm. And if that would be a great way to I would love to get the top pitching gurus out there Mhmm.
On a Discord, and we just like, no neither one of us have seen I the the game. Mhmm. We the and we verify that somehow. Mhmm. And then I say what's gonna happen.
They say what's gonna happen. Mhmm. And then you run it. So I'm like, I would say, if this is fastball in, middle in to up and in, he fouls it off, swings and misses or pops it up. Mhmm.
And they would say, you know, if it's this, it's this. If it's a slider, this happens. If it's a change up, this happened. Mhmm. And so pretty soon, what would what would end up happening is you would be very astonished how often it's like, oh, foul tip's coming.
Oh, look at that. Foul tip. Mhmm. Mhmm. Because hitters act so, predictably.
Their the human nature is so strong in them that whatever they see, they react to. Every pitch changes their attention a little bit. It sways it a little faster or slower. Mhmm. But it's super predictable to the point of you can predict that's a rollover ground ball waiting to happen if he executes.
If he throws this pitch in this area at this speed, this will almost 100% be a rollover ground ball if he hits it. And there it goes. Like, the first time I ever when I first introduced effective velocity to Tom House, this was, like, 02/2002. I can't remember. It was when Barry Bonds was still playing because the the Giants were at San Diego.
So I went down and my brother, he I think he owned the building that leased space to Tom. So they they had become friends. And so he set up the meeting, actually. I'd met Tom a couple times, but I didn't set up the meeting. And so he he takes me to to a a game that night, Padres game.
And he's like, explain to me what this is. So Jake Peavey is on the mound. Right? And they show this thing out in the in the outfield that's that tells you what the pitch is and what the speed is. I'm like, oh, okay.
If this episode opened your eyes to the real reasons why big leaguers like Mike Trout lose 30 miles per hour of exit velocity on certain pitches and why most youth players trying to copy them are getting worse, not better, then it's time you introduced your athlete to a training system that actually works. The swing shift program at hittingperformancelab.com isn't built on guesswork or TikTok drills. It's grounded in the same science and biomechanics. Perry Husband breaks down in this episode from understanding optimal contact zones to maximizing exit velocity through efficient mechanics to training swing paths that give your athlete margin for error even when they're a little early or late. In a world where just swing hard isn't good enough, Swing Shift gives your hitter a proven roadmap to more consistent power, better timing, and fearless confidence at the plate.
So if you're ready to stop copying broken MLB models and start developing a swing that's a % on time, % efficient, and % sweet spot, check out swing shift today. Hitting performancelab.com forward /swingshift. Perfect. So I said, okay. If this first pitch when we started first pitch of the game, if this first pitch is PV's normal 93, 90 four, 90 five, and it's it's middle end to up and end, he he'll foul it straight back if he swings the back or he'll swing a miss.
So first pitch, foul straight back. And he puts it in the life of it. Okay. Keep going. So if this next pitch is a little higher, he swings and misses.
Next pitch, up and ends, swing and miss. Like, then he starts looking at me. We go 11 pitches deep, and I haven't missed one yet. It it and it doesn't always work like that because I don't know if he's gonna swing. I don't know what's going to I I don't know.
I know he's count it. I know he's gonna be late. Yeah. But I don't know how late he's gonna be precisely. Because when I say he's gonna swing a miss, that means I know he's gonna be five or six or seven miles an hour late.
Mhmm. But when that happens, it's like, dang. And so, you know, when I when I predicted, like, the third rollover ground ball, if he throws a slider right here and he and he hits it, it'll be a ground ball to shorter third. Yeah. And my brother's looking at me like, are you a witch?
How how in the world can you possibly know that? And I'm like, it's just sign it's just a simple here's how the hitter acts. Here's what speed does to them. Here's what location does to them. Like, if if I'm a hitter and I and I'm and I get buzzed twice in here, what does that do to me?
I'm not gonna just go right back to leaning out over the plate. Right? It it's going to affect me physically and psychologically, and the speed that I expect is gonna change a little bit. So every single pitch thrown alters the landscape. It it changes stuff.
So you throw three curve balls in the dirt, and I keep getting more and more and more bent over. Guess what? I'm I'm moving my attention. My attention is is morphing all the time. Mhmm.
But when you understand it, you know how it's going to morph. And you can literally predict I I'm gonna say 70% of all contact and sometimes 90. It just depends on the on the day. And if I get a chance to scout the the the pitcher and the hitters ahead of time, then sometimes it gets really scary how how often it's right. But there's only one part of it, which is that that's very, subjective, and that is judging what happened to the on that last pitch.
And so when you when you when you look at it from a scientific standpoint, it it's very subjective, that part of it. Right. Right. But you what you're basing it on is millions of pitches, hundreds and hundreds of thousands of observations of at bats that happened exactly the same way. You look at the data and you you know what data happens when a in a hitter's late.
Exit velocity goes down, foul foul balls go up. You know, there's just a ton of things that happen as a result of being late. Like like the fastball study of what what how does exit velocity happen in the strike zone. And it's exactly the same. Not a little.
It's exactly the same every year. It might ebb and flow by a mile an hour, but the the diagonal that is that includes middle middle, up and away, and down and in. They have if league average that year is 93 miles an hour, then the average exit loss is gonna be right around 93 miles an hour. Up and away, middle, middle, down and in, all the same, which is weird all by itself. Right?
Because it's not supposed to be. But it is every single year. Within a mile an hour, up and away, middle, middle, down and end. No difference. So all of analytics is is positive that up and away is the best place to elevate fastballs, yet it's the highest exit velocity of all elevated locations.
Right. Let's get into some, some demos since we we promised again on this one. I didn't wanna go too far because, I mean, we could keep talking like this, and our our podcast listeners would love this conversation. So let's shift into shift gears a little bit, and let's start sharing sharing some screens. Alright.
I'm gonna be very transparent and say this may be the least, I've been because I got lost in a couple things this morning and didn't get a chance to put together a bunch of stuff. But it might actually even make it better because this is I'm just gonna jump around and randomly grab, hit, or, you know, all over the place and just Right. We'll just kinda look at mechanics. So look at the size of this. Like, is is your eight year old have guns like that?
And the answer to that is no. Probably not. Right? You can see mine. The or this is when he was, like, six or seven back here behind me.
Yeah. Not even close. Yeah. So the elements of of this that I think are important is you gotta know what your barometer is. If I'm gonna look at this player Then who's in do you know who the hitter is?
It's Diaz. Okay. For the rays. Yeah. Yeah.
Mhmm. And he hits this ball opposite field. It's a homer. Here it is. This is a homer on an up and away fastball, oddly enough.
See, right on that diagonal, he could have thrown that middle middle, same effect. Mhmm. Down and in, same reaction time. Now he might not hit it the same. He's not gonna hit it opposite field probably down and in, but the but the reaction time of up and away is the same as as if when I lower the pitch to middle middle.
So when he hits this, the question is is is this a %? And you watch where it goes, and you go, no. That's the shortest right center in baseball, I think. Mhmm. It went, like, four rows deep.
So is that as far as this guy can hit it? And the answer is no. And everybody out there is screaming, well, yeah, but it doesn't matter. It went over the fence. And then Perry, how many major league home runs have you hit?
Well, it depends on how we count that because, a a lot, actually. Yeah. Right. If you count, you know, making them happen or helping them happen Right. Not making them happen.
Mhmm. But, I mean, I don't mind having that conversation either. You know? The the the the player thing because, you know, I didn't hit all that great in the minor leagues. It took me a while because back then, you didn't use wood bats when you're an amateur.
And we didn't even have, amateur baseball when I was, once you get past a certain age, like, past pony league. We didn't have any of that those other leagues. We didn't have American Legion. So I played men's fast pitch softball when I was 16. And I'm facing guys that are throwing 82 miles an hour from 46 feet 45 feet.
About a hundred and five? Yeah. More and more. They we had a we had a team that won the world's the world championship, out of Palmdale. But so when I got to the wood bat, it it was a very difficult thing.
But, I mean, I was the MVP of the college world series. I hit had a 32 game hitting streak in junior college. I think it still stands. What somebody told me the other day that they think it still stands. And I you know, so it wasn't like I couldn't hit.
I hit. I hit at a at a pretty high level. But that's not really the point. The point is is what is the best method? What's the best mechanic?
And if you're gonna look at that swing and say, this is the way to go. Right? Because that's a homer. Let's look at this swing and let's break it down, and let's copy this swing. And I'm gonna say, well, let's measure it and see if it's a %.
So the first thing I would say is he's lost this angle already. So The front arm and the and the back angle. Yeah. If that lead arm stays locked, not only is it a longer lever, but it also creates a better angle and he and more energy gets stored in that one fulcrum. Because right actual the actual angle looks more like maybe, what, one fifteen degrees with the bad angle and the front arm, you know, if you drew it.
Is it about that? You're you're talking about less than arm and this 25 degrees. Yeah. It's not accurate from this angle. We'd have to be able to Right.
To get a But but you're talking about if he if he gets that front arm locked at at, you know, approach, and the barrel kind of sub 90 degrees angle coming in. So front arm shape front arm and, barrel angle shape if that angle is held better and tighter. Yeah. Well, number one, the barrel stays behind the ball, inside the ball like everybody wants, which, you know, is a is a stupid thing to start with. But it's it's if you want the barrel inside the ball, is his is his hands inside the ball?
Yes. Is his barrel inside the ball? No. He's casted. To some degree, he's already casted and lost some of that hammer action.
Mhmm. So he's not at a %. And and I don't mean to pick on this, this player or this hit because this is what I stand for, is I know you're not gonna be a % on time. I know you're gonna be early and late. But when you have a mechanic like this with the barrel path, guess what?
I don't care if I'm on time. This is him being late because that is where he gets extended, and that is where he's 100% on time in his mind is closer to there. And and bring it back. So he's con making contact just behind his belt buckle. Yeah.
I would say that he is one and a half to two miles an hour late Mhmm. On 95 because that was 95 up and away, and that's what it is. And that is that you drew that line. Was that about a foot and a half behind where he should be making contact a hundred hundred it? Right there, he hits it right there.
I would say maybe as much as 18 inches. Yeah. Foot and a half. So 18 inches at 95 miles an hour is about two and a half miles an hour. Mhmm.
That's about how late he is. And but when your swing plane is awesome, who cares? But if Aaron Judge or anyone who has that philosophy of going up Mhmm. Very severely, they don't make contact there. They foul that ball off.
They foul they foul tip it. They swing a miss. They pop it up because they're under it trying to come at it not from this angle, but they're coming at it from an angle that's way more upward. So the torpedo seeing yeah. The torpedo coming up to hit the speedboat on top of the water.
Right. And so you end up getting like, if I create a a a bat and a ball here, if if these are way out of whack, but you get you'll get the idea. Mhmm. If I'm trying to hit this exactly in the middle if I'm coming at it from this angle, right, I'm gonna be when I'm early, I'm gonna top it because I'm going past it. And when I'm late, right, I get right to there, and then this thing goes right off the top of my bat.
So whenever I take that weird angle, your margin for error is ridiculously small. Like, if you look back at Aaron Judge's homer that he tied the 62 or 61 or broke the record, actually Mhmm. I think it was the fifth or sixth fastball in the same at bat. Foul ball. Foul ball.
Foul ball. And then here's a homer. Right? Because it takes a lot to time up and to be perfectly on time when you take that approach. And what you what you say in part two on that too is that with that torpedo coming from under to hit the speedboat across the water up top, one in 25 or one in 50 is what you're looking at it being a % on time.
Yeah. And and you would have to really test that to be certain. But here's here's the logic. Hitters in the big leagues that hit 25 homers, that's one in 25 at bats where they're close to being at maximum. Right?
Mhmm. And not that homers are necessarily maximum. Like, this one's nowhere near his max. Right. But it's a happy accident.
But but my point is is that when you swing up and you do enough data and you look at what happens when, like, for example, what's his name? Voigt. Oh, Steven Voigt. I don't think it's Steven. Is it?
Who played with the A's, lefty? No. No. No. The righty hitter.
Big led the led the all of Major League Baseball in, in homers in the shortened season. He was with Padres. He was with the Yankees. Anyway Okay. Carlos did a study.
So I did all the research for him on MLB Network, and I looked at all the fastballs middle up in the strike zone that he's faced in his three years. And of all the ones that he swung at, he foul tipped, swung on and missed, or popped up 84% of them. Oh, jeez. Almost nine out of 10 Wow. The fastball's right down central.
Right. Belt tie, He foul tipped, swung on and missed, or popped up. 84. And that's what I saw with Bellinger for, like, four years with the Dodgers. And it's what you see with everybody that does that Yeah.
Is that they fell off. You almost if you're a pitcher and you know what you're doing, that's almost a free strike Mhmm. Or a one pitch out, one of the two. And and I know that sounds ridiculous to say that at this highest level, but it's it's it's true. So the way I look at this is I realize that he's late by a foot and a half.
So he's a couple miles an hour late. He's also not mechanically perfect. So there's gonna be a little bit of absorption at the moment of impact. Mhmm. So that's how I look at this.
You know, like, if I'm looking at a, again, I'm just gonna start grabbing stuff because most of these have a side view to go with it. Well and here's the thing that Perry's talking about. Right? So as Perry's queuing this up, it's the fact of, okay, which which hitting mechanic philosophy is better. Right?
And it it it all depends on what is your definition of successful hitting mechanic philosophy. Is it to have an adjustable swing, which is a what I'll probably the majority of people out there do. So it's this it's like we was talking about where Mike Trout will extend middle away and middle down with his front arm, and he'll have a one zero one, you know, middle away average ball exit speed. And then if it's middle in or middle up, he'll he'll suck the hands in and have that 90 degree chicken wing. But at the consequence of his average exit speed going down to 73 miles an hour.
So do we have to lose that much ball exit speed from middle away to up and in? Well, with some philosophies, some some philosophers hitting philosophers are okay with that. And Yeah. It's a reason why It's a good trade off for them. Yeah.
So for for Perry and I, it's the reason why they don't want metrics. They don't want ball exits to enter into the equation when they debate this because this really exposes their philosophy and how inferior it actually is to us. So both Perry and I are both I'm on board with Perry's, and, you know, we're we're very much in sync on that. We may differ on how we teach it and things like that, but we want a %. When we say a hundred hundred, actually, and Perry added the extra hundred, which I also agree with.
I've been teaching that as well. % on time, % swing effective or efficient, and then a %, like, sweet spot percentage. Like, we're hitting it right on the sweet spot. That's what we're talking about. That's our just to kinda let you folks know what our grading criteria of a really good swing is, is it's 100% on time, 100% swing effective or efficient, and a %, swing, like, sweet spot.
That's what we're hundred hundred hundred is our goal. Go for it. And it almost never happens. Right. And that's not the point after all is to make it happen.
Because, actually, when it happens like, Carlos Pena, the one time he did it, I do have that one. I think I can find that fairly easily. The the one time he did it was, like, god. I hate it because it's a single. It's a 20 mile an hour single that he just absolutely careers.
I think I have that one. Let me find that. It's such a good example of what I'm talking about because I don't actually even want it to happen. And I'm gonna show you another one that he did that I've never seen before or since, and I played for a long time. And you'll have to tell me whether you have or not.
Mhmm. But this one first. And this one is the ball's coming in. If you've been listening to this episode and your mind's spinning about inefficient swings, exit velocity drops, velocity drops, and why copying big leaguers like Judge or Trout doesn't work for youth hitters. Here's the deal: the number one way to build real bat speed and barrel control, the kind that holds up in games, is with smart overload training.
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Mhmm. Six degrees. Yep. I don't even want that. Right?
I want Carlos Pena to get underneath that slightly. But when he does square that up, when he's when that's the goal, I know that, like, right now, no one in America could predict what's gonna happen with what is going what what kind of contact is gonna happen right here, including Carlos. He doesn't have any idea that he's gonna be a % on time to this or really close. Mhmm. In fact, he's probably just a hair early because it it kinda leaves his bat, as you can see.
The way you judge that is when wherever the bat leaves right after it's hit. Like, if it's going upward, then he probably topped it just Mhmm. Ever so much. Right? But this is the one that you don't even actually want.
But I'll bet you that that ball, he topped out at one nineteen, but they weren't they weren't publishing it. You had to kinda know someone to get And that ball, what Perry is saying, that ball was coming in probably around just above his knee or so. And just imagine, this is what I'd use with my hitters. Imagine the pitcher's throwing a ball through a through a tube, and the tube is set by the pitch height. Yeah.
So imagine this ball coming in just above his knee, and he's smashing it right back through the tube. Right back through the tube. So the same height the pitch is coming in, it's going it's taking off at the same height. Yeah. And so if that's perfect, that's your idea of perfect Mhmm.
Now you're gonna miss below and above center, right, all the time. But you're gonna hit four missiles underneath that are probably in Carlos Pena's case, almost all homers. Mhmm. And then you're gonna hit four that are that you barely missed the line drive, but they turn into ground balls. And those are those hundred mile an hour ground balls that have a four forty batting average.
Right. So I get the best of all worlds when I'm in that boat because you think you're gonna hit the ball solid all the time. It's not going to happen. You're going to miss it nine out of 10 times. The question is how bad are you missing it?
And the answer is really bad if your swing plane looks like this. Mhmm. You are not going to square balls up all that often. The fact that he hit 300 is amazing, but is it him doing it because he only hit one fifty, I think, against my imaginary real major league data, but imaginary fastball in, slider away, curveball down, change up in. He didn't hit above one eighty against any of those pitches when thrown at the right speed.
So I manipulated statcast in order to throw a change up that was at the right speed to miss his bat, which is, like, 84 or less Mhmm. And 93 or more inside fastball, 87 to 85 slider away, and then a curveball that's slower than 82. And it with that combination, he was awful and will be awful if people just threw that combination of pitches. Mhmm. Why they don't is beyond me.
So watch this. This is a lefty. He hits the ball to left center. Mhmm. Carlos Pena again.
And look at that thing hook. That thing hooks 40 feet at least. Was that Granderson out there? And that's Curtis Granderson. That's not a nobody.
It looked like he he he took a horrible route to this one. He opens up to his right side, Granderson, in center. So what causes the ball to hook, if you understand golf, is, you know, the the direction the ball starts is always the direction you swung the club. Right? So if I push a ball off to the right, it's because I did something in my swing to cause me to push the ball to the right.
If I if I have my club face open at the moment of impact, it's gonna put spin on it that's gonna make it slice. Mhmm. If I close my my head club head, it's gonna hook. Right? Even though it's so it starts right, but it hooks because I swung the club right, but I had a closed club face at the moment of impact.
So it puts that spin on it. So what he just did was he hooked the ball, which means he was a 1% on time. And this ball's, by the way, so Pena's a lefty, and this ball is on the outer outer third part or probably, yeah, outer third part of the plate, if not, maybe a ball off the plate. Right. And he hooks this ball slightly to, you know, to the right side just to the right side of center field.
Well, it starts off to Yeah. Right. Right. Right. Right.
Left center. And then works its all the way back to center. Yeah. And turns turns Granderson around. So when you hit a ball to left, it almost always fades, right, the other way.
Mhmm. It's hard to keep it fair if you hit it down the line like that because your barrel's open, and it's causing that kind of spin. Right. This is another study I don't think anyone's ever done right, is what happens to the ball off the bat. But the reason I bring this up in a timing perspective is because he was so close to 100% on time, but he was early enough to get the barrel closed enough to create that kind of spin.
Mhmm. So he was a 1% on time. He was he was early by one or 2%. Almost perfect, but just a hair early. So when you go to that extreme on your timing, now I'm gonna get better and better and better and better at my personal timing if I'm measuring everyone off of perfect.
If I'm just randomly saying, oh, that's alright. That's alright. That's alright. It sounded good. That ball was crushed.
You know? All of that stuff is great. They went over the fence. They went over the fence. It all it doesn't have to go a hundred feet over the fence.
It just has to get over the fence. Wall scraping. Yes. You're right. But you if you are at 85%, you have to be almost flawless to hit that ball out of the yard.
Whereas Carlos at a 20, if he misses it by 20%, he's at 80% of his max. He hits the ball 30 feet over the fence still probably. Yep. And that's what happens. That's the goal.
The goal is to get to a point where I know my worst, ugliest ball still has a great chance to be a homer. That's why he hit a homer every eight and a half at bats for that period that we You build yourself a cushion. It's not just a let's just get it over the fence. Let's just get it over. It's like going beyond the fence.
I'd heard Bryce Harper at one point was talking about he doesn't just try and hit it over. He tries to hit out of the stadium. You know? It's like I want the hardest ball you've ever hit in your life every time you come to the plate. Yeah.
Not like a swing out of your butt and have to call time out and put your shoes back on kinda swing. I'm talking about the definition I use is I want 100% effort or, like, 100% of what you can control a %. So if you can swing on a scale of one to 10 at a 9.9, that's what I want. If you have to slow down to an eight to get control, then that's what that's your max. But if you're at a 9.9, like the Tiger Woods is gonna be at about 9.9 effort level with every swing that he takes.
And Al Guyberger had a great comment, the golfer that first got to break 60. He, he said, the only way you know that you're consistently having the same, swing is if you're all out. Because if I'm halfway, how do I know what halfway is? How do I know what 80% is? But I know what all out is every single time.
Mhmm. Right? I know what my 100% level is, and so that's what I wanna produce. And then everybody's like, well, how do you hit curveball? Well, that's the whole next level of stuff.
Right. Is first, you develop a 100, one hundred, one hundred swing, and and then you learn how to apply it. You learn how to load. And this is where, you know, I I shied away from talking about this for a long time. But this is one of those factors that that softball players, especially Oklahoma, of what they're doing is they're trying to be 100, one hundred all the time.
And their goal, if you see this little diagram to the right, they're trying to be at about 10%. K? Ten ten or 10 degree launch angle. 10 degrees. Sorry.
Yeah. 10 degrees. Yeah. And and that that's basically the goal. But, realistically, what we're trying to do is be a % on time, And we're trying to practice a swing plane that's gonna put you at at 10 degrees.
Why? Because you're gonna miss four of them that are gonna go up and four of them that are gonna go down and a two of them along that line at most. Right? And so the more in line with the pitch I am, the higher this number is. If I'm going at a glancing blow like this, that's why I say it's more than, like, one and twenty five.
Mhmm. Because you have to be perfect. And we're not I'm not trying to be perfect. I'm just well, I'm trying to be perfect, but I know that I can't be. So, therefore, I'm gonna create a line that's in line in a head on collision with the ball and just let the round ball round bat thing do its thing.
And this just happens to be you know, if you watch this pitch coming in, it's at about zero degrees. And just for the record, this pitch is 73 miles an hour. And look where she's at. Locked out. Mhmm.
She got about a Oh, it's right on top of her. About 80 degree angle between her front arm and the back barrel. Yep. Yeah. I mean, it's, like, if I get rid of these, let me let I'll just do that line.
Mhmm. Right around 80. 80 one. Yep. Yeah.
A little bit right around there anyway. I mean, it's it's always hard to get that. Right. But where is she? Is she going down below it?
She's getting in line with it Mhmm. And staying in line with it forever. So if she was late on this, what would happen? She would still crush that. Mhmm.
It wouldn't matter. Right? It would be a hard ground ball most likely, but she's gonna still crush that. But as it turns out, she hit this one, I think, over the camera well in in left center. It's leaving 30 degree angle.
It did show in 30 degree angle. So But this 73 mile an hour pitch, at 43 feet, where she's really letting go of it probably at 38 feet, something like that, this is equivalent to about one zero seven, one zero eight Mhmm. The action time. So it's not like you can't compare this to major leagues. You can.
Yeah. In fact, I guarantee you, there's not very many major league hitters that are gonna hit over a buck 50 against the most elite level softball pitchers for the first month that they play. Right. Because it's such a weird thing coming from that low angle, and most of them are swinging up. They have no shot at hitting a more than a buck or a buck 50.
It's just not gonna happen. Right. I mean, not that they can't hit them. Of course, they can. I mean, I played in that level for a long time and have a lot of friends that play pro ball that became really great fast pitch softball hitters.
But the point is is that you have to train yourself, retrain yourself to be to understand what that plane is all about. Right. Well, Perry, let's, because I got a hard hard stop. I gotta pick up the kiddos. Let's, let's do the part four.
We'll we'll continue on this, and we'll bring up some more examples. I think I I think especially that Mike Trout example and showing people exactly, you know, taking that up and in fastball versus that down in a way and how that changes, you know, how that changes his barrel path. And then also maybe going over we did we did it in, I think, part one. We talked about that Carlos case study they did on MLB network or whatever where he talked about he took Judge and Ohtani Yeah. The hard hit rate versus, sweet spot percentage and, a a a rise or a reese, however you say his name.
You know, his hard hit rate versus his sweet spot percentage. And we can maybe show that, demonstrate that. So, anyway, with with that, where where can people find you for more information, Perry? Because I I think I think this is this is it, and this is what people really have to to consider is what are we measuring success wise of a hitting philosophy. So if it's something that, where we got the the speed boat on top of the water and we got the torpedo coming from underneath, the torpedo being the barrel path and the and the the the motorboat or the speedboat being the pitch.
Right? Is it that, or is it shooting a torpedo right in the front? I was gonna say we forgot we forgot to finish that analogy. Because when you when that speedboat's coming racing towards the torpedo. Torpedo on the same plane, guess what?
You're they're not you're not gonna miss very often. So where can pe where can people find you, Perry? At effectivevelocity.com is the website, and I'm gonna start doing a lot more stuff on on Twitter at, at EV Perry husband. Yep. And Yep.
And you have products, and you have, your books and all that stuff at effective velocity if you click on I think it's, like, products or something in the in the navigation. Right? Yeah. There's a there's some memberships in there and Yep. Some individual courses.
And he's got a new book out. So this those that are watching this or reading this on my on my blog post, I'll have Go to maximumexitvelocity.com for that one. There you go. There you go. Because that one's at a different site.
But it's a book there's a ebook and a and a course. Yeah. And that and that's a good one. He's he's skinned that one more for softball and kinda talking about Oklahoma and work with them. But, I mean, it'll the principles all apply to both.
It's just more of a, you know, softball tailored book. But, anyway, Perry, thanks again, man, for for the time, today, and and we'll do part four. We'll we'll just kinda go on this. We'll have more time on on part four. We'll try and make sure that I'm not butting this up against a kid pickup time.
Perfect. Alright, brother. Well, hey. I'll I'll I'll keep up with you. I'll I'll jump off jump off so we won't have our post, which, you know, some people would love to be a fly on the wall for that, I'm sure.
But, but I'll I'll I'll I'll look into the Discord. My son did it all through, when he had, like, 20 friends on it one time, and they're all playing games. And I think that would be really fun. He's out there. A lot.
I think a lot of people would learn a lot. Just I get to hang out with Perry watching a baseball game. Yeah. That'd be very fun. But also, like, a lesson or, you know, because I know the way I teach, I would get ragged relentlessly.
I'll be there with you getting ragged. I don't care. I don't I mean, I don't care at all because the results I get are Right. They speak speak for themselves. Yeah.
But, you know, when you when you had high school kids at 95 and the rest of the world's at 78 Yeah. You know, that I mean, and they started at 68, but now they're at 98. Yeah. It it's it's hard to argue when you just get consistent contact after consistent contact, power, strikeouts just virtually go away. Mhmm.
But that ain't that's not the case with with other philosophies. Right. Right. Alright, brother. Well, thanks again, man.
Have a good, Labor Day weekend, and we'll catch up. We'll do our part four next week. Sounds good. Alright, brother. Thank you.
See you, Perry. Thanks for tuning in to the Swing Smarter Hitting Training podcast. If today's episode got you rethinking swing mechanics, timing, or how to train smarter, don't stop here. Subscribe so you never miss a game changing episode. Leave a review to let us know what's working and how we can keep delivering value.
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