Hey there swing smarter family. Welcome back to the show. Today's guest needs no introduction if you're serious about understanding the science behind elite hitting. I'm joined once again by Perry Husband, the creator of Effective Velocity, one of the most revolutionary pitching and hitting concepts in modern baseball and softball. Perry's groundbreaking work has reshaped how the game thinks about timing, barrel path, and how hitters can truly maximize exit velocity without guesswork.
In this episode, we're diving deep into why locking out the front arm could be the ultimate game changer for your young hitter and why most hitters, even MLB stars, are leaking power without even realizing it. We're also unpacking the myths around staying inside the ball and how to actually train for massive game time bat speed the smart way. If you're a parent, coach, or athlete looking for that unfair advantage at the plate, get ready. This conversation will flip what you thought you knew about hitting mechanics on its head and give you the clear science backed blueprint to unlock your athlete's real potential. Hello, and welcome to the Hitting Performance Lab podcast.
Again, today's part four with mister Perry Husband of effective velocity dot com. And we're gonna pick up where we left off last time, and I'm gonna have we're gonna do our normal conversation, but Perry's gonna go into some screen share, which I know for you you listening out there on the podcast, we'll do our best to to describe what what Perry's going over in the video itself. And if you are listening on the podcast and wanna see what's happening, what Perry's doing, then I will have links to the video, the YouTube video, and and the blog post on hitting Performance Lab that will have the video on there. We'll have links to the podcast, and we kinda link everywhere and interlink. So first, I wanna welcome Perry back on with us.
Welcome, Perry. How are you, man? Always a pleasure. Good. Good.
Hey. I wanted to first start off. I had a couple questions from a couple readers. One is Joe Yurko, coach Joe Yurko out in New Jersey, and they're basically the same type of question. And with who's the other one?
Was Paul Kelly, coach Paul Kelly. And Paul's question was it's kinda the opposite, at least in the way we we we teach it over at Hate Performance Lab, but he says, ready for part four, which we're recording right now. So thanks, Paul, for your question, number one. And, Joe, will you guys talk about what proper barrel path looks like for curve balls and low fast balls? So that's one.
And then the other one that tied in with coach Joe, he talked about how how do you keep that front arm long and straight. Joe's a big or at least he was. He was a big, bent arm front arm, like, trout type of guy, and and and I've debated with him over time. He just has a hard time getting to the fact of how do we get to that up and in fastball with a straight or pretty much straight front arm. So those are those are the two questions we'll we'll kick off.
So go ahead. Take it away, Perry. Well, I would say on the, the last thing you said, which is how do you keep a a locked out lead arm on an up and in pitch, it's super simple. Like, the the the thought is, like, people have been leaning over the play to try to get to that down and away pitch, and they pull their hands in in order to to allow the the the pitch to to get closer to you because they're late. Right?
So if you're on time and you understand what the principle that we've been talking about is, like, I can take me personally, I can take a pitch on a tee, move it six inches inside, totally lock out and keep it fair right down the line. Right? That is is a it's very simple. A lot of people would tell me that's impossible. You can't do that.
Okay. Let's go out to the field right now, and I got a lot of money to says, the otherwise. Because all it is is understanding that no matter what you do like, let's say that you believe in this and you're gonna get extended on that on that up and in pitch. Are you saying you're you should never get extended on it? Or are you saying if I time it just right, I'm gonna get extended on it?
Well, what either way, I'm trying to get extended on it. Right? In both cases. All you have to do is take your lead arm and lock it and take the bat and and keep your hands inside of it. This is where most people go wrong on this, is that there the two things are tied together.
This equals casting a little bit. This locked out completely is almost the opposite. It's like the only possibility of keeping your hands and the barrel inside the ball is to lock this. But it's also the only way to to absolutely, max out the leverage. It's the only way that you're going to get to the point where it's exactly the same.
This barrel, my kinesthetic awareness of that barrel is enhanced maybe threefold as soon as I stop doing this. Because when I do this, I lose the the awareness of where that barrel is precisely. But when it's locked, it's always in exactly the same place. So it's a lot easier to to get it to the right place. The hardest part for people to have this question is, a, they've never done it.
Just lock out and go out there and set the tee in the right place, not in here because that's not where you hit it. You hit it about 18 inches to two feet out in front of home plate. It's the only time that you can do it and and get fully extended. So just go do it, number one. And number two, put an exit velocity on it.
Again, our conversation. You can hit it like this all day, but you cannot ever hit it at your max like this. So when when you when you bend that arm, you're always gonna be less than max. And I think it bears repeating from our our last conversations, the the Mike Trout. Right?
Just take one of the best guys in the game and take his you've done the research on this where he's locked out down and away on a down and away pitch, and his average average exit velocity, not his max, but his average exit velocity locked out down and away pitch a hundred one miles an hour Yeah. And bent 90 degree bend up and in average exit velocity. You've told me the past 83, but you're like you're even in the seventies. Oh, he's he's in he's at 73 in the 73 miles an hour. So that's a that's a huge difference.
That's what what? 30 Hi, Fitzy. We got, Perry's dog. He just came up trying to give me a couple of backhands. He pictured my son who's in Korea.
And every time he would get on a Zoom, he's got a that's his favorite. Yeah. He pretends to like me, but he he's my son Shay is is his favorite. I love it. Yeah.
He's he's 73 up and in. He's 80 in the middle up, middle in, and, up and in box combined. So that's one third of the of the zone. He's at 80 miles an hour, 81, I think, maybe, over over a five year period in the study that I did. That's an average high school exit velocity.
Yeah. At best. Right? I mean, at best. Yeah.
Yeah. So he's gonna hit a couple homers like that. He's gonna hit for high average because number one, when guys do that, there's a, a a recent study that I found when the exit when the, effective velocity goes up by it when it gets to, like, 96, so that's 93 middle end, there's this crazy shot of ground ball percentage just goes straight through the roof. Mhmm. Because guys start doing this and they start swinging up, and they catch the top of the ball all the time.
So what you what you think of as a as a ball that's never gonna be hit on the ground, they actually hit a ridiculous amount of ground balls because they they do this cheater move and swing up. And so that's a lot of what you see in with Mike Trout being one of the fastest guys in the league. He's gonna get a lot of infield hits on that. So his batting average is still gonna be pretty good up there, but it's not gonna do damage. That's the whole point.
Right. The league the league loses they're they're at about 84 is the average around the league of up and in fastball, exit velocity on up and in pitches. And I'm not talking out of the zone. In the strike zone, the up and in box is eighty eighty three to 84. It depends on the year.
And it's 87 middle up and 87 middle in. And then it's 93, which is league average fastball, on the diagonal, and then it's 96 down in middle where Mike Trout lights it up and down down or middle away. And then down and away is, like, 91. So it's it's it's it's about seven miles an hour, eight miles an hour faster to hit an extreme down and away fastball than it is to hit an extreme up and in fastball. Mhmm.
Which is ironic because that's what EV says is the difference in speed between a 93 mile an hour fastball down and away and up and in. So in other words, as the pitch gets faster, they get later and later and later because they're trying to do all this mess. Mhmm. So the only way you can actually get locked out and get out there is to understand where you're getting to, number one. And then number two, you just put your sights out in front and and get locked out early.
Keep your hands inside the ball for as long as you can. Keep that angle, and then just release and watch what happens. Again, you and I have said this a thousand times. Just go do it. Go test it.
And, you know And the angle and the angle Perry's talking about for you podcasters that are listening, the angle is the the straight straight straighter with the arm, straight with the arm, or slight bend or, you know, long with the arm, the front arm. He's talking about the angle of the the back arm and hand, pulling the barrel. So it's what you're gonna feel is you should feel a lot of stretching in that bottom wrist on the on the bottom side, of it as as that top hand's pulling that barrel into more of like a if you take an angle of the front arm and the barrel, less than 90 degree angle, less than 90 degree angle. So that angle is what he's talking about preserving as you get to that pitch. That's that up up and in up and in pitch.
And the second you pull your hands in, you start losing that back leg angle. Mhmm. You're you're And bending your front elbow. Yeah. Right.
And you so so, like, if you if you fully load your front wrist and, like, pull it all the way back and you feel that tension, right, and and you let that go, there's there's this release that happens. K? When you pull your hands in close to your body, you lose all that tension in your wrist. And so now all you have is just a little bit of a flick left. The hammer action that you have when you're here is gone almost, or at least to some degree.
Yeah. So there's there's a lot of argument about why you would try to keep your hand in. I understand where everybody's coming from, but it isn't true. Most of the stuff that they think is not true. Like, the whole the whole idea of walking up to a net, putting the bat in your belly button, right, and then trying to keep your hands inside of it.
Well, I can do that drill where I lock out completely barred Mhmm. And completely stay inside of that net and then hit it out in front. But when I'm doing it, I'm doing it with some oomph. Right? That the bat head has a lot of power by the time it gets there.
With this nonsensical way to do it, pulling your hands in, there's no oomph in the bat. The bat speed is dramatically lower. Yep. So while you accomplish what you think you want, which is to keep your hands inside the ball, Keeping your hands inside the ball puts the barrel out here where you lose the barrel as you're keep get getting your hands closer to being inside. So you've lost the whole plot If you're trying to keep your hands in, but you let the barrel go outward a little bit, what's the point?
You're not inside the ball anymore. You get Well, that's that's I think and that's I think the the rub is that these coaches, they think that it makes the swing long because of the front the long front arm, but it's that's not what makes the swing long. What makes the swing long is when the barrel gets out there too early. And this and this is where this is our gripe with the snapping early barrel in the zone stuff that the the uppercut, the launching the torn torpedo from the bottom trying to hit speedboat going across the top of the water. The problem with that is is that as you launch that that barrel soon, super fast, early in the zone is you lose control of that barrel at that point.
Once the barrel leaves the shoulder, it's hard to maintain control over it. Would you agree? Yeah. I'm gonna do some I'm a I'll I'll pick a guy, you know, whoever. If someone sends in who who is a guy that's doing this?
And I'll break them down and and show you what what the pros and cons are, because I I work in pro ball in two ways. I'm either helping pitchers or I'm helping hitters. So when I'm helping hitters or when I'm helping pitchers, what I'm looking for is stuff like that. Because everybody who has that, everybody who has like, for example, if if you stay on your back leg and you're hanging and hanging and hanging, you create a lot of hang time, which is good. That's a good thing.
But you have no leverage. So when you have no leverage, but you have a lot of hang time, guess what you can't hit? You can't hit fastballs up and in. And so unless you cheat and do this move to try to get the barrel there, but then you lose all kinds of exit velocity. So I don't care if you hit it.
I hope you hit it like that. Because, the odds of you hitting it are about one in twenty five. And when you do hit it, you're gonna hit it with a compromised swing. Okay. That's great.
I I'm not gonna stop Michael Jordan from scoring, but if I can keep him to 25, I'm pretty good defender. Right? And I can't keep you from hitting it, but I can I can certainly put you at 84 miles an hour of exit velocity instead of a hundred and four? Mhmm. That's really the And that's the essence of what effective lossy is, is I'm gonna as a pitcher, I'm going to avoid you hitting the ball anywhere near a hundred miles an hour.
That's the whole point. And and when you cheat for me, thank you is all I got for that. I wanna pitch to nine of of those guys. And you know what's funny is, I just caught something. One one of these hitter one of these hitting coaches, this teaching the same same thing, not as us, but but of of them, the one legged stuff.
And he was saying today on Twitter, said something like, we we don't have to hit weighted balls. We don't have to hit we we we actually we shouldn't hit weighted balls. It was some some to that effect. You don't need there's no benefit to hitting weighted balls. And I would go back to our basketball hitting the basketball versus the baseball because you're you're thing on no leverage.
Right? Yeah. Well, also, when that's the other thing that happens when you when you put a hinge in here is you you dissipate all that energy that's stored right here. Like, if if if the audience just kinda, like, grabs locks out their lead arm Mhmm. And then grabs the thumb and just pull it back.
You feel all this tension. And then you bend the elbow. And when you bend the elbow, all that tension and the wrist goes away because the the tension goes between the elbow and here because now you have two fulcrums. Right? You've got the this is a lever, the upper arm, the forearm's a lever, and the bat's a lever.
And so when I lock, I got one locked out longer lever. Mhmm. What did Archimedes say? Give me a long enough lever, and I'll move the earth. So the longer that lever is, the more power is generated by it far and away.
It's not even close. Well, it's an engineering principle. It's an engineering principle. Yeah. Yes.
And so when you talk about kinematic sequences, if you if you'd lock this, now this whole thing acts as one. Mhmm. It's way more leveraged. It's way more consistent, and you'll find it out with anybody that has the guts to test it. What you what you'll find is that your consistency goes up, your barrel awareness goes up, so your quality of contact goes up.
But your your power goes up, period. But your power on contact, in live games goes up too because when you bend, not only do you dissipate all that energy, but you also create shock absorbers. Mhmm. If I butt, what do I do? I create shock absorbers so that I absorb the energy from that moment of impact.
I absorb that. Well, what if I were to lock out in a bunt? Mhmm. That ball hits my bat and jumps off like crazy. Right?
Probably goes all the way to shore stop. Well, what if I'm moving now? Like a push button, but I lock out. I'm gonna I'm gonna hit it all the way to the outfield. Because when I lock out and I create more body speed and bat speed, which is the essence of what I'm talking about anyway, is when I release correctly and when I stretch this and I create that leverage, I max out bat speed, period.
The more I max out bat speed, the longer I can wait to pull the trigger. So while everybody's afraid of getting being late back here, meanwhile, they're hitting the ball 73 miles an hour like this. And and I don't mean to to pick on any any player for any of this because the players are just doing what they've been taught their whole life. Right? Right.
And and you can't argue with how amazing Mike Trout has been with the body of work. But what we're talking about is not just is Mike Trout a good player. Of course, he is. I'm not gonna change Mike Trout necessarily. I'm I'm gonna explain to him about this principle and then let him decide on his own.
But at the end of the day, the reason he does it is because of a philosophy. It's not because he he thinks that this is creating more power. It's not. It's losing power on multiple levels. But hitting the heavy ball is all it does is it shows you what happens when you add force at the moment of impact.
Right? Because in a pitch, and I've heard people say I've heard scientists say that it's about 4,000 pounds of force. I don't know what the number is, but that's what that's what I've heard. At if you add 4,000 pounds of force at the moment of impact and you have any weakness in your at the moment of impact, you're going to absorb that shock. Mhmm.
And I've showed guys where where you get a ball inside and it hits the handle, and it just sends shock waves into the hands and forearms. You see the forearm shivering because they've created so they've created so much absorption in their body because the ball hits a weak part of the bat, and their body's in a weak position. And so their whole body is just, like, absorbing the shock from that from that poorly timed impact. Mhmm. And as opposed to being locked out and making that same impact, the ball jumps off your bat like crazy.
So, of course, they hate heavy balls. I would too if I had that philosophy because it shows a weakness. It it shows that when you have force, everything goes down. So if you hit a a a fully inflated basketball, if you're, let's just say, a college player or pro player, if you're not at 80% of your t exit speed, then you have issues at impact. Then that means your game exit velocity is is lower because of that.
So you should be at 80% of your max with a fully inflated basketball off the tee and and your tee exit velocity. So if your tee exit velocity is a hundred hundred miles an hour, just normal baseball, and you got a basketball up up there, then it should be at least 80 miles an hour. Well, I I shouldn't say at least. It should be at least 72 to 74, 70 five. Mhmm.
And it and maxed out would be 80 in my book. And and that will depend a little bit on body type and you know? Because the the a kid that's that's smaller but creates a lot of bat speed, he may give up a little bit at impact even though his bat speed's incredible. It may cost him a little bit just because he's not quite as dense as the as the person that's, you know, outweighs him by a hundred pounds. Mhmm.
So it depends on strength level, a lots of stuff. But I would say somewhere between 7580% is where they need to be. If you're not, then I can guarantee you that your your game exit loss is not what you hope. It's not as high as it should be. Right.
And I have a challenge too. So on that on that up and in pitch, and we can move to the down and away, you know, type of thing, I I have a feeling I know Perry's it's just getting that arm locked out and things, but see if it if it changes at all, then we'll go into the video video analysis of some hitters. One of the things that I work with my hitters, and I'm I'm when I had a conversation with Perry back in we went to Dallas ABCA, we were talking about and I had already had kinda rumblings and seed planted of of this. But thinking about in terms of ball coming in through a tube, pitcher throws a ball through a tube, tubes tubes connected to the catcher's glove, and then whatever height that pitch is, that's how high that tube is. And so I always talk about hitting hitting the ball back through the tube with my hitters.
And and one of the things that's really helped was taking the imagine the ball coming in through that tube, and then you have in a table underneath that ball. The table could be the tee. Right? So there's just a table right at that ball, sitting right on the table, moving right across that table at a slight angle down. And what I tell my hitters is to skip the barrel across the table without touching it.
And, typically, what hitters do is they'll bounce it off the table or smash it into the table as it goes. Right. So what this is doing is taking what Perry's talking about with a longer front arm, using that angle, taking the front arm angle and the barrel angle less than 90 degrees, creating that stretch in the wrist and having that flex there in the wrist and that bottom wrist. And now it keeps the the the barrel above the hands. You wanna call barrel barrel up above, and and so that the hitters challenge as they get to that up and in pitch or pitch middle up or pitch middle in is to skip the barrel across the table.
Is that something that you agree with? And it and it and it's exactly that. It's like the when you understand this principle, hitting the fastball at the top of the zone, which is arguably the most impossible thing in Major League Baseball right now Mhmm. When you lock out your lead arm, your barrel gets in line and it stays in line for a ridiculous amount of time. Like, I would say the length of your bat plus another half of the bat length.
So at the top of the zone, I'm gonna get my barrel in line, and it's gonna stay there all of that time all the way through in fact, almost like from the very start, because I'm gonna load. I'm this this is like a pet peeve of mine. If there's a cookie cutter thing that I believe in, it's getting your hands to the right position. I don't care where they start. But when you load, if you don't put your hands in the strongest position, which is just about the place where your forearm is parallel to the ground Mhmm.
And you can test this. Raise your hands up, put them back down, and have someone push you down. The second you feel that pressure and you're trying to hold it from up here and then you put them down in that strongest position, you'll instantly know that that's the strongest place you can keep your hands. Mhmm. It's also the place where it's the top of my zone, and I pull directly from there.
And I can hit this ball all the way back here. Right? Or there or there or there or there or there or there or there or there or there all the way through to the entirety of my swing. So at the top of the zone, you have ridiculous coverage of being in on plane with the pitch. Not the not the hit, but the pitch.
And then as the as the pitch gets lower, your hands go down and the barrel goes down, and then it levels off, and then it comes up and out a little bit. So it's kinda like a canal shape. So the lower the pitch gets, the less time that your barrel has in line with it. Right? Mhmm.
What what the what the the guy that's trying to stay down and get underneath the ball, there's a big reason why they're doing that. And and it is because it's the it's the way that somebody decided, well, if we're gonna get nothing but outside fastballs down in a way, how do we lift that? Mhmm. And the answer is, well, you gotta get underneath it. And that's where I think a lot of this came from was trying to get the barrel underneath that.
And so they're trying to drive the ball that's at the bottom of the strike zone. I'm not. I'm gonna hit this ball out of the yard all day every day because it's the one that's in line with my pitch so often, and it's very likely that ball is gonna go in the air. So the top two thirds of the strike zone, I'm gonna try to drive the ball out of the yard. But the bottom part of the strike zone, I'm gonna drop the head to it, and I'm gonna hit hundred mile an hour ground balls and and low screaming line drives with about a four fifty batting average that goes along with that.
So I don't wanna lift that ball at the bottom. That's a fundamental difference between my philosophy and all of the the launch angle philosophy is they wanna drive that ball. But in doing so, they lose the top definitely, the top shelf of the strike zone is done. They're just done. Right.
And it's not worth the trade off to me of getting a few extra homers on that low and away pitch by creating something that's not the most efficient swing. Yes. I'm gonna hit more homers down there. I might even hit higher. I might even have a better batting average down there because when you go down low and if you look as as much video as I do, when you go when a when a hitter does that move, they create a flat area at the bottom of the zone.
Right? And so they they buy themselves maybe, like, this much time in line with the ball. It's hard to gauge that from this close, but Yep. They buy a little bit of time in line with the ball. And it's more than than the norm, but it's not the same as as what I'm gonna get at the top of the zone when I get off my backside and I block out and I create that that in on plane swing path that matches the ball.
So it's a trade off. Total trade off. You you choose. Do you wanna go down there and hit homers on occasion and get killed at the top of the zone, or do you wanna kill the top of the zone and hit four fifty on pitches at the bottom of the zone? And that's that's a trade off.
That's a personal question, I guess, that everybody has to ask. For me, that's that's a no brainer. Right. Yeah. Yeah.
No. And and I agree. And and I really, you're describing two barrel paths. Right? And can you take a pitcher's behavioral pattern?
So you you we were talking about that you were prepping prepping for the Diamondbacks and the Diamondbacks pitchers looking at their opposing team. And, you can look at also, if you're prepping for a hitter facing the opposing pitching, if you got the opposing pitching that's living down and away with the fast middle away with the fastball, middle down with the fastball, rarely goes up in the zone. Can you, as a hitter, that could be your strategy. That's a misnomer, though. They don't they don't minimally go up in the zone.
They go up there all the time, but it's by accident. They try to go up in a way like like they're fooling someone. And the reality is is is if you go up in a way, the exit velocity is exactly the same on fastballs in the major leagues, up and away as it is middle, middle, and down and in. So along that diagonal Mhmm. The exact same reaction time, so it's the exact same exit velocity.
Mhmm. So you're not gaining anything by elevating and going up and away, but all of analytics is absolutely positive. I've had many arguments with pitching coaches about the fact that up and away is not really elevating the fastball. You might as well be throwing it middle middle. Yeah.
Difference. The only difference is is that everybody's swing plane is coming at it like this. Mhmm. But their barrel is right there passing it's passing directly underneath the barrel with with their a swing. So they're on time, but they're off plane.
Mhmm. And and so they see that they're that they're having some swings and misses. But for some reason, they don't look six inches over because six inches over, middle up, the batting average goes way down, and the chase rate is the same or it's actually greater. Mhmm. I I just I don't understand the way, the way that they think entirely.
Right. But thank you from a hitter's standpoint. I appreciate it. Yeah. Thanks for your help.
Well, let's let's go into some some of the videos. Do you wanna maybe play on that so we can either look at some swings that are in that that middle up, maybe that are locked out or and or are not, like hitters that don't do that, hitters that do do that, or we could go on that down and away barrel path. You know, we could just basically make this about, this part four about barrel path and what it looks like in a more effective barrel path in the in that spot or whatnot? I, I wanna show this there's a there's a couple of these that are really good. One of these this was online from KennetraX, and it's really cool because it shows you exactly what's happening.
Right? And this is, I would say, pretty much a cookie cutter swing of bring the hands in close to the body so that you create more bat speed. Lose this bat leg angle Mhmm. So that you create less bat speed. Because this angle right here is now off the forearm because you've already lost this other piece of 31 degrees.
So forearm for those on the podcast listening. So Perry drew a line from the the front for the front elbow down the forearm to the knob and then up the bat, and that's that was a 31 degree angle because he's bending bending at the elbow. And then the hands so the hands stay inside, and now he's gonna push the barrel into action. So, again, if you if you've ever done this, we we must have done this where you put your hand flat on the table and lift your middle finger up, slam it hard as you can, and then take your other hand and lift it and release it. And the energy is dramatically different.
Right? Yep. Well, when you pull your hands in and you try to get extended through impact, you're pushing the bat into the ball. And the pushing action pales in comparison of the pulling action and then the pushing action. So if you pull the bat into action with that front side locked and the front the big muscles in the body pull the bat into action.
Now you you're taking advantage of all that elastic energy so that you can wait longer, way longer, actually, so you can stay in that stretched out position longer and recognize pitches. Because if you pull your hands in, guess what? That takes time to pull my hands in. And in that time, I'm I'm not preparing myself to hit a pitch, any pitch, really, other than maybe, like, to fall back and hit that up and in fastball. So when you see this happen, a bunch of stuff, it triggers a bunch of stuff.
And I'm not, again, not picking on this player. It has nothing to do with him. But you see the the bat path. And this is a hundred and three mile an hour exit velocity ball. But is this ball hit perfect?
No. Because it would be leaving in the same line as his bat. Right? Mhmm. So his bat path is in that twenty, twenty five degree line right there, but the ball is not.
The ball is leaving at about zero degrees. Mhmm. And so the reason that's a big deal no. It's not shaking. Uh-oh.
The other side doesn't wanna hear the other side doesn't wanna hear Perry laughing. Usually, some bigs come in. Sorry. No. There was a guy calling me that was, is would be a great guest for us to kinda have on.
Oh, okay. But who it is. This is kind of the perfect idea of what this path is. His path is designed to show us what where his bat is going. Right?
And so pulled up, it's the same hitter, but the skeletal the skeletal look of him. Yeah. And now you've got this, this swash that shows the bat path. Right? Mhmm.
Now this bat, the the shape of that would change based on on how what your swing looks like. There there's another thing I wanna get into at some point, not necessarily today, but the direction of that is very important too, and I've never heard anybody talk about it to date. Mhmm. But it's another thing that helps people understand what it is that you're how how it is that you would get yourself locked out and get to that inside pitch. Because most people in general are swinging the bat as though they're hitting the ball oppo.
Right? Because that's what they've been taught. Right. And and so that makes it more difficult if this if the if the elliptical arc of my bat is heading oppo for me to get turned on that pitch that's up and in. Uh-oh.
What? I gotta freeze on my side. But Oh, you're good. I can we can hear you. Okay.
So so the the the angle of that bat is either gonna go this way, this way, or to the pool side. Right? So the the the line that you're swinging the bat on. And so this this ellipse changes based on where it is that you're gonna actually make your swing directed to. This is like, people are gonna freak out when I say this, but it's it's totally real.
Like, if you walk out in front of your kids, and I would challenge everybody in the audience to do the same thing, stand out in front of home plate and ask them to watch your hand or or your chest and just swing the bat, dry swing right towards your chest. Mhmm. And then move over to where you're on their poolside and and have them watch you the whole time. Don't look where the ball would be, but look at you and just swing and watch what happens. Their stride will naturally go towards you.
Their body will open up perfectly towards you. Mhmm. And their swing path will go directly towards you. Then do the same thing opposite field, and you'll see three different swing directions. You'll see probably three different strides.
And all of that is, like, when I know where I'm gonna go so if I know that I'm gonna hit this up and in pitch, why would I lean out over the plate and try to go with it? Mhmm. I'm not. I'm gonna hunt it. And in hunting it, what I would do is actually create a line that's more in line with that.
And I'm gonna load up. I'm gonna stretch all the right rubber bands. I'm gonna recognize that. And when I see what I wanna see, I'm gone. And I'm gonna I'm gonna be on time for that with a locked out lead arm and keep it fair.
And I know a lot of people in the audience like, you can't do all that. Yes. You can. Mhmm. I just I mean, look at Oklahoma.
They're they do it all the time. They do it every night because they're hunting that pitch. So, this all comes down. Everybody in the world is happy with a hundred and three mile an hour exit velocity. I'm not because he mishit the ball, and I'm also not because he's going in a direction that doesn't necessarily match that.
Like, he's it's almost like he's in a a pull mode with this angle, and and he's catching the top of the ball. In other words, every pitch path that matches this so if you start drawing in a slider, matches it perfect. You draw in a fastball that's down and away or middle away, guess what? It matches this much of that path. Great.
And that's what the swing is designed to do is it's every swing where whatever you swing design you have, it has an area where it's gonna match up with pitch paths. The problem with with the severe one and this one's not severe. This one's actually pretty good. Yep. Because it's gonna cover a lot of pitches at the top of the zone that not too bad.
The only one he's not gonna cover is this one because you can see how sharp the bat goes up at that moment of when he when he gets past this mid midway in the swing, you can see how quickly this bat goes up because that thing's up at the direction that he wants to hit it. Right. Again, that was one of those weird moments last time. Right. Yeah.
We for those that have listened to parts one through three, then we mentioned that there was a there was a a moment of enlightenment, I think, where Yeah. There's this commonality amongst these people talking about this barrel path that they're that they have. They're on plane early, and they stay on plane for a long time, and they can hit it when it's late when they're late, and they can hit it when they're early. But when you look at the barrel path, it's a very upswing. It's that torpedo being fired from below trying to hit the speedboat going across the water in the top.
And so we Perry was looking at that, and and and we talked about it. And it seems more of on plane with what, though. Yeah. And it's on playing with where they wanna hit the ball, not where the ball's coming in. Yeah.
So, I mean, I I just drew the Nike swoosh that everybody's trying to create. Yep. And and it it basically lets you hit one ball. You know? You have about one ball width of of perfect timing if you're if that's your philosophy.
Right. And that's why guys on up and in fastballs will miss you know, they'll hit about one and twenty five, roughly. Mhmm. So with that Nike swoosh uppercut trying to hit the up and in pitch, I don't care how quick you are. I don't care what you do.
You're going to miss most of them with that path because it's just too hard to be perfect. I would have to throw three or four in a row, which I'm never gonna do, but I I would have to do that for you to to time that pitch so perfectly that you're gonna be right there at exactly the right time. So if I've thrown you a change up and a slider and then I come back with that fastball up and you're trying to catch it like that, forget about it. Right. So The the point here is, again, any you can learn any philosophy out there and try and apply it.
And there's a lot out there that you can do. I mean, not a lot, but there's there's a few of them. If your philosophy is or if your goal, your objective is a % on time, you wanna get on time % of the hundred percent, that's your goal. If you wanna have the % most effective swing, put on that, and you wanna be a % on the sweet spot. If those hundred, hundred, hundreds, if those if if that's part of your philosophy to stack them up, then that's what we're talking about.
Yeah. You you can do this adjustable. We call I call this the adjustable swing, the one that people are talking about here with the the the torpedo. I love it. I call it a swing adjust.
It's swing steering. Right. So you can do that, but and you could be okay with a hundred and five mile an hour ball exit speed off your bat. But can that be one fifteen? Can that be one twenty?
Can that be one twenty five? Are are I mean, that would that would make a huge difference, I think, an extra adding an extra 15 to 20 miles an hour, and Perry's got the numbers on that. Yeah. It's ridiculous. It's not even you wouldn't even believe it.
It wouldn't even go in a movie if you add actual numbers of what happens when guys get up to a hundred miles an hour. It wouldn't be it would be included in a nonfiction book. It'd be book. It'd be included in a fiction book. It's like in the six fifty range Right.
Of batting average. And and the OPS and all those other numbers that go with it are through the roof when you get to a hundred miles an hour. And and you if you you don't even have to exclude ground balls like the whole world does. All you have to do is just say all balls a hundred miles an hour or faster, and you're gonna see a ridiculous number. But that will include ground balls, And and that's the whole one of the biggest problems.
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This is what EV crossovers mean, and this is another reason why this is such a hard conversation with someone who's never thought about it in these terms. Like, this player, in my opinion, has a pretty good move. Right? Those barrels are coming into the zone and flattening out, and they're staying flat for a pretty long time. It's not exactly flat, but pretty much in line with this pitch.
Right? It's not bad. And he misses the pitch a little bit underneath it and hits a long fly ball. This is a homer. I'm I'm certain.
But what if you were a little what if this ball were to move and was faster? Guess what it would do? It would run into that bat. Mhmm. What would happen if this ball was slower and ran in here?
It would run into that bat. Right? Mhmm. So all of these bats across here, there's, like, 15 to 20 of them depending. All of those different possible contact points are running into pitches all night.
Mhmm. And I wanna say it, and people are gonna probably give me a hard time about it, Totally by accident. It's not them hitting it. It's that the ball moves into a the path that's directly in related to this. Because if this pitch were six miles an hour faster, it would run into this bat path back here.
Mhmm. Does that make sense? Mhmm. And if this pitch was six miles an hour slower I'm sorry. Three miles an hour.
And if this were three miles an hour faster than this one, whatever this one pitch zero, let's just call it 90 miles an hour. If this was 93, back here is where the ball would be be made contact at a perfect timing. Right here, if it's at 90, And if and if you were to mistime it and the ball were to show up now, three miles an hour difference. So an 87 mile an hour cutter, let's say, that moves this way and a 93 mile an hour sinker that moves away and this 90 mile an hour split that ends up there. Every one of those run into that bat.
So if you're Joe Schmo, whatever design you have, you're gonna run into some pitches there, some pitches here, some pitches here. Mhmm. With bad pitching, every hitting philosophy is really good. Yeah. Because because you you're gonna have this fish full of barrel this this barrel full of fish that you can't you can't swing your bat and miss all the balls.
Mhmm. I know that sounds really complicated and crazy, but when when the pitching gets good in other words, when they stop giving gifts away and an outside fastballs at max speed, harder off speed pitches showing up in the middle, when they stop stop doing that, guess what happens? All those hard hit balls go away. It's a ridiculous thing. But right now, every philosophy works because something like 66% of all the pitches are twos and threes.
Mhmm. Twos are outside fastballs. Threes are hard off speed pitches that would show up right here. Fours would be softer that would show up way out in front. Right?
Mhmm. But right now, the bulk of all pitches right there. And guess what angle they're at? Pretty much this one. Yeah.
So guess what happens? Any Autobot could stand up at the plate and just swing like this at a certain speed, and that speed is 92.5 EV miles per hour. If you swing at that and you swing up, you're gonna run into a whole lot of pitches until those pitches dry up. The second those pitches dry up, this philosophy no longer works. See, I and this was a conversation I was having with my my son, Noah, who's 10 last night.
We We're getting home from soccer. We're just talking baseball, and we're talking about Judge and the 60 plus homer homer homer year last year. And with all the technology and all the data that we have at our fingertips, I find it hard to believe that pitchers aren't looking at what are the bulk of those pitches and where are they located. I mean, that that's an that's just an easy search. Why and why keep throwing the same damn pitches in the same damn spot?
If you look at the average let's just say we got a lefty hitter, and these pitches are coming in from this direction. So this would be the diagonal of EV. If you look at every hitter in Major League Baseball to a person, they're pretty much that's their hot spot right there. Mhmm. Mhmm.
And what is that? Well, that's the place where twos and threes come to meet. So Perry so Perry drew so you got lefty hitter up, got the strike zone, and drew a diagonal from up and out, middle, and down and in, a line, the diagonal line there. And then he just he just circled, like, what the heat spot would be, and it's more down. If you got the two triangles there of that rectangle, it's more the bulk of these are in the bottom left triangle.
So if I were to say this out loud, it would be a 93 mile an hour fastball away, which equals 90 EV miles an hour. Or it's a 90 mile an hour pitch that ends up right here on this diagonal. Or it's an 87 mile an hour pitch that ends up on this diagonal. So as that swing cuts through that swash, swath, whatever that, like, that term, swath. Swath.
Like, if you were just picture a bunch of baseballs hovering around, right, and you swing a bat, you're gonna hit a bunch of them. Mhmm. And that's what's going on right now in the big leagues is the bats that make it through there are gonna hit a bunch of possible 88 mile an hour pitches thrown over here and 96 mile an hour pitches thrown down there. And it's just a conglomeration. So the second you add EV miles per hour to every pitch, which is what they haven't done, that's why they don't see it, is because they think that 93 or 96 miles an hour there is totally fine because it's still 96 miles an hour.
And so as long as they refuse to look at EV miles per hour, they'll never see it. Mhmm. Because, like, this guy is hitting a fastball that's away, I think. Yep. And he's late to it because it doesn't go back in the same line.
It goes offline a little. He's tiny bit late to it. But, like, as you can see, all of these paths what if he were to throw, what if he were to throw that pitch much faster and it moved away? Again, it would run into this bat when it was back here. Mhmm.
On on his way to where he thinks he's gonna make contact here, which is very predictable because it's fastball away, he's gonna run into some pitches back here. And if it was slower, he would run into these pitches right here. Right? That's that bulk I just drew. That's what's happening.
And I know it's weird because it's three d and and and in a weird position, but that's what's happening all day every day. This was one of the ones I wanted to show today was because this is what I believe should be happening on low pitches. The rest of the world's trying to get underneath this. Mhmm. And he's not doing this on purpose.
This is a reaction to, oh, the ball's really low. I'm gonna lock and create this because he's automatically thinking that I gotta throw my hands down to get to the ball. Right? And when he hits this, he's in the position that I would say is virtually absolutely perfect. Mhmm.
Perfect. Happens you see the did you see what happens? His barrel goes down, down, down, down, level. Mhmm. And so what's he gonna do with this pitch if he hits it back here?
Rock it. Mhmm. Right there, rock it. All of those are gonna be hit really hard. Right?
So even though he's very upright with his locked out lead arm, hitting a pitch below his knees, what's he doing? He's leveling off at the bottom of the strike zone. Mhmm. Now you you you would be very hard pressed to find, Jan Gomes do this again because he's not trying to do this. Mhmm.
But he makes the optimal move because he's trying to get down there to that lower pitch. And this is what I'm talking about is, and that's why I've had such a hard time with this is because I have to find the anomaly to show what the right stuff is. You see what I'm saying? Because they're all He has They're all just swing adjustment. 500 swing of him of him making this swing.
Right. But I wanted to capture it and show it today because it's the perfect answer to what we're talking about. Now if this were an up and in pitch, he would not do this. He would bend, pull his hands in, and try to bend backwards in order to try to recreate that. Did something happen?
I think I lost You're good. I no. You're good. So I can't so your your video, you're frozen in, like, a Elvis type pose. But but we could see what you're doing on the screen, and we can hear you.
So Okay. So, he would never do this. But what I'm saying is is if he did do this, his bat path wouldn't look like what it's doing now. So if I were to draw this bat path everywhere he goes, it's going down, down, down, down, down very sharply. And then what does it do?
It starts to level off there way down here. Right? Mhmm. So now it's now the barrel path is in line with a very low pitch for a period of time. Whoops.
I don't know why this system does this. It's the only thing in an amazing system that Yeah. Hate is it moves my spots when I when I wanna keep them in place. But you see what happens is you get this parabola where it goes down, level, and up like a canal. Mhmm.
So that's the bat path that I think is the perfect bat path to hit low pitches. But you're not gonna hit homers. And that's the part that some a lot of people have trouble with is they wanna get down there and and go up like this. So they create a path that's in line with the pitch for a brief period of time. So if their timing is perfect, bravo.
Right. It's it's it's complete difference in philosophy. So for for those out there that are upset, and I'm on Facebook, there's coaches that follow me, and they just get so upset with the 200 plus strikeouts a year that these hitters are are doing. So upset. And so then what they do is they make the wrong adjustment, and then they they put their hitters into these bendy arm angles, front front arm.
They get them choking up. They get them in a defensive swing even with zero one strike. And I I just don't understand why they're doing it where as if we're just getting a hitter to hit it right back through the tube, where wherever the tube's set, wherever tube height the pitch coming in, hitting the I would argue that a little bit. I I would push back on that a little bit. And what I would say is the tube changes too.
Because the ball comes down at an angle. And so what I think most people are trying to do is get back to where they would hit it underneath it and hit it at that angle, like we've talked about a million times. But what I would say is when the tube is like this Mhmm. I'm I'm still gonna try to hit it back into that tube Mhmm. And miss it up there because I know I'm gonna miss it half the time up and half the time down.
I can't control that. Sure. Like, he probably hits this better than he thought he was gonna ever hit this. Yeah. Because that's a that's a rocket that comes off his bat.
Mhmm. But look at him from up tall. How tall he stays. Mhmm. It's a a little bit of bend, but this ball is 93 at the bottom.
Everybody in the world is saying that's a great pitch to hit. Mhmm. Or that's a that's a great pitcher's pitch. And then that's this is where the exit velocity is the highest in Major League Baseball, right there and right there every year on this diagonal. Yep.
Outer outer, bottom third corner of the strike zone. Yeah. So, the this miss that I that I've shown a couple times when the hands come in like this There's a judge. Yeah. Yeah.
And so what if, for example, because this takes time to pull your hands in. And when you pull your hands in and now the ball is, uh-oh, that was a that was a tunnel curveball in the dirt. Guess what? You just lost all of that that you think you're gaining by hitting the ball right here. So if you were to draw a t where he's at right there, this is part of this philosophy is to try to let the ball get deeper.
It's also one of the reasons. Instead of hitting it out here where where EV says that you have to be in order to be a % on time, you gotta be way out here. But the average guy in the big leagues will let that ball travel an extra two feet and do this and hit this ball back here. This is probably less than 90 degree front arm angle. Yeah.
Way way less. So if I get Aaron Judge to hit a ball like that, thank you. Because you're you're not gonna leave the yard very often like that. It may happen once or twice a year, but I like my odds of him actually trying to make some kind of contact on that pitch with that. You're keeping you're keeping Jordan under 20 points.
Yeah. It's not about saying that I'm gonna strike him out every time. I'm gonna make his life as hard as physically possible by creating the biggest spreads possible. So if I throw a fastball at 95, but I throw it in, it's more like a hundred because he needs to hit it out here to do damage. Mhmm.
So he has to add some time in order to get out there to get that. So that's me stealing time from him. So you can keep your hands in here all you want to. Thank you. Because once you do that, I know that your swing path is gonna look like this, and I know your odds are one in 20 five of hitting that pitch.
And and and listen, people people with this this early snap this early snap early in the zone, this is that early snap, which is a pinnacle, a cornerstone of this particular philosophy, that early snap into the zone is what causes this. Yeah. So you the the because think about it. If you kick the barrel in the zone early, early snap, then like a supinated, you know, supinated get get supinated quickly. The only the only recovery that you have if you're looking at a pitch from a parry's pitch a parry pitcher that's coming 96 in, the only refuge you have is to suck those hands in if you've already snapped the barrel into the zone early.
You can't maintain the the length of that front arm. It's just impossible because you can't control the barrel anymore. So all the only thing you can do is pull your hands in, which drops as we see with Mike Trout. You go from a hundred and one mile an hour average ball exit speed down and away to 73 mile an hour ball exit speed up and in. That's what happens.
Yeah. And for a long time, pitchers wouldn't throw up there. They're afraid to throw Aaron Judge inside. And I to to this day, I I have no idea what they're thinking, But I did a little study of him, and what I found was if you were to throw 93 league average, but you throw it up and in, that pitch up there is r one. Right?
If you think of these pitches as ones, twos, threes, and fours. Mhmm. R one equals about 97 plus. Mhmm. But every pitch, 93 or faster up and in.
I think his batting average was about one fifty. Mhmm. I think he hit one homer up there. Mhmm. And and then if you take out of that same tunnel and you pick, the the right speed differential on your sliders, they would have the right they would look like this inside fastball, but they would move away.
But not at 93, they would move away at, like, 87. Mhmm. Batting average again, somewhere around one thirty or one fifty. Which it is that eight 87 EV, or is that the actual Yeah. Like, if so if you were if you were to throw pitches that would equal ninety seven eighty seven seventy seven.
Right. Right. Right. So there's a 10 mile an hour differential. Right.
No hitters spans 10 miles an hour between the two. And everybody in the audience is gonna go, ah, yeah. They do. I've seen them do that all the time. Well, it's because they're hitting the fastball away Mhmm.
At 93, and now it's 88, 80 nine down there, down and away. Mhmm. And then they hit an 85 mile an hour hanging slider that's really 87. Mhmm. So in reality, they're hitting a ball that's two miles an hour apart.
Yeah. What you say is, within six miles an hour differentials where all hard contact happens. Yeah. And and it's because it takes six miles an hour for the bat to make it through the zone. In other words, if you throw 93 down and away, it's 90.
And if you throw 90 in the middle, it's 90. And if you throw 87 in, it's 90. They all equal 90. And so that's that's what I mean by six miles an hour. You've taken six radar miles per hour, and you've spread them out to areas where the barrel runs into 90, that 90, this 90, and that 90.
Right. So there's a there's times when pitchers will throw all of those pitches in one at bat to this guy. Yeah. And and you're looking at him like, what are you doing? Yeah.
I I hate watching baseball now because you see this happen all the time. And then you see him get this, boom, and this at the right speeds, and he's done. Mhmm. I I get What, like, what is it, Perry? Like, that that's just it's crazy, man.
That's why I was going back to a matter of time. And the and the reason is because until the pitchers wake up and stop throwing twos and threes as the primary approach, because they're listening to all the gurus on that end, and they're trying to get more velocity and more spin rate, and those things are are key elements, but they're very low on on the scale of what makes pit what makes pitchers have success. I mean, I I watched one of the greatest games I've ever seen. When I say that, I mean, I wanna show you guys a couple of things about this. Because I this is May maybe another Oh, yeah.
Six to ten minutes or so, Perry. What do you think? Okay. Okay. I wanna show you two things really quickly.
So this is, Justin Steele, and he's arguably gonna be the Cy Young winner. Right? So you got Cubs Cubs, Diamondbacks. Cubs lefty. Yeah.
Cubs lefty. Yep. So this is this is a fastball, and that's not even the best version. Let me get this one up here. This is a fastball, 91 miles an hour, but it's middle up.
Right? Yep. And he gets a swing through. And this is a slider that's in. Oh, actually Up ahead.
Yeah. That's not what I want. Let me get let me get the right combo. Sorry. This middle up, and then I wanna get a slider that's middle in.
And I want you guys to see what the difference is. So, I mean, when you think about that, it's ninety one and eighty three. Two really simple pitches. And he throws 40% sliders and 60% fastballs. And this is it.
This is his philosophy against right handed batters. And guess what? He's lighting them up because every pitch looks identical, and there's 10 miles an hour between them, roughly. Mhmm. If he had a pitch that went the other way, he would literally be unhittable.
And how many guys in the in the Major League Baseball throw 91 miles an hour with a with a slider? The it it is like, when the moment this is a guy that has woken up. He has awakened to the idea that, you know what? I wanna keep it really simple. I'm gonna blast you with fastballs up, and I'm gonna throw an off speed pitch down.
They're gonna tunnel. See you. And that's what he's done all year. Mhmm. And he has he has exactly, done precisely that.
He has lit people up. Well, what was the what was the stat with deGrom? You you told me this was back in Dallas when we were talking, and and deGrom had I think his ERA I don't know if it was first, second year, whatever it was, but it was before and after he made the made the switch or woke up. And I think you said something like his ERA was somewhere around three and a half or four and a half. And then the only change that he made was to mix in more fastballs middle up, and it dry it completely dropped his ERA to, like, two and a half or sub two.
No. No. No. No. He was he was sub two.
He was one one seven, I think. One point. Sub two after the change. After the yeah. But What was he for?
The only thing that happened was he went from being having his primary fastball here to moving that primary fastball more, let me just move that, more up and away. Right? It's not even ideal, but it's it's just what that does way. Yeah. What that does is it takes your 97, 90 eight, and instead of it being 93 down and away, it's now 97 up and away, 98.
Right. So you've added four miles an hour. What pitcher doesn't get better when you add four miles an hour to them all? It's like adding it's adding it's like for hitters adding five miles an hour to ball exit speed. Exactly.
So what he can do, though, is live at one zero one, and he still hasn't done that very often. When he does that, hitters are in deep trouble because the fastball looks like this outer third, and then it runs in there. Right? And then they then he can throw that slider off of it that looks absolutely identical. So it's like what this kid's doing only instead of both pitches moving in towards you, which is an advantage if you understand what's happening.
Mhmm. That's an advantage to you. But he's doing it in a way where, where it's going the opposite. Like, the hardest one's coming into you and the softer one's moving away from you. Forget about it.
And if he would had another pitch that went soft down and in, out of that same tunnel when when you do that math with any hitter in the big leagues, they're all like Aaron Judge's, which is very, very low production. Batting average under 200 and home runs go see you. I think you had one total homer. And what I did was change ups in at the right velocity, fastballs in in this, in this area Mhmm. And sliders in this area at a certain speed and curveballs at this area at a certain speed.
And when you look at all those, and they're all from right handed bat right handed pitchers. So in essence, the arm action would be kind of the same. The movement patterns would be about the same. So it's gross to do an a study like that because it's not accurate. Mhmm.
But it's accurate in the sense that what did he hit in here? A buck 50. What did he hit down here? A buck 50. Nobody does this, right, because they don't understand it yet.
Mhmm. But when they do this, he's gonna have to rethink that swing because that swing is not gonna work. Right. I wanted to show you one more thing because Sure. This was really, really cool.
This is a guy who throws 88. But where does he throw it? He throws it on the plus side. So guys are late. They pop it up.
This is 89. So it's really about 91 EV because it's just barely on the plus side. Mhmm. But you see the line that's created away. Oh, no.
It's not. It's moving in. And so just that little tiny amount causes him to miss. So then you'll see something like this where this is one of the original things that that, that I put in book three, downright filtering pitching Mhmm. Was he takes his change up, and he uses his tilt of his hand to make it run two different directions.
Mhmm. So this is actually a change up. But it's a change up that looks like that pitch we just saw. That fastball. Yeah.
Because it because that fastball looked like maybe two or something, but it moved Wait. This is that's a different one. I grabbed the wrong fastball. Yeah. It was up.
It was, wasn't quite up and in, but it was up kinda up middle. Yeah. I figure But it looked the same coming out, and then it just moved up in towards his hands. Oh, maybe it was this one. Sorry about that.
I'm not sure if it's this one either. Perry's got, like, hundreds of thousands of these things. Well, every time I I find a game that is really intriguing, like, his game this day was super intriguing. Mhmm. Because this is not it either.
He'll throw he'll throw a fastball that starts outer third and moves in. Mhmm. And then he'll throw a sinker that starts in there but ends out of the zone. And then he'll throw a change up that ends up in the zone or out. He can choose.
Mhmm. And then he throws a change up that starts out there and runs and holds its height and ends up out there. Mhmm. All out of the same tunnel. They all have the same look, except the one has a slightly different tilt in order to get that movement moving to the left.
But it it's it's when when pitchers wake up, the guy's throwing a hundred that understand what he understands, forget about it. Right. It's gonna get very difficult. Because if they have a hard time with a guy throwing 88, mixing it up pretty good Mhmm. What's gonna happen when they're throwing 98, mixing it up pretty good?
Right. With four different pitches, five different pitches, all coming out of the same shoot, good luck is all I got with those swings. Because Right. The when the if the swing is not at max, mechanically, you are already at a disadvantage to when the when the pitchers wake up. Right now, you're you're hitting fish in a barrel.
Mhmm. Though, that barrel is gonna get much, much, much harder to to fish out of very soon. Yeah. I I man, I I just don't. It's crazy how we've been talking about it or I've been talking this about you.
You've been talking about this for a long time. But with you and I I I got it in Dallas when we had our conversation. Our three hour conversation at lunch, which was supposed to be an hour. You know, turn it into three hours. But, like, I got it.
Right? And that was how long ago? Four or five years ago, maybe five years ago, six years ago. It was pre pandemic. It was '18 or '19, I think.
Maybe it was '19. And I remember talking about it, you know, when when they're gonna wake up when they're gonna wake up. And I'm, man, this is, like, four or five years later, and I know some pitchers have. Some some franchises are that you've been working with. I know some pitching coaches and things.
But even right now, the the one you're working with, you know, the pitching coach, the the pitchers are just not on board. Like, I don't on not on board with what? Like, why can't they So look at this. There's two two different change ups. One down and in, one away.
They're absolutely identical out of the hand with one exception, which is where the jet Jedi trading will come in later. Yeah. It's ridiculous. And then out of the middle of that comes this fastball at 91 EV miles an hour, and they can't. Even at 91, you absolutely dominate hitters on the inside part of the play if you understand what you're doing.
Right. And and we'll we gotta do this discord discord where we're I sit here with the in a game, and we'll we'll just kinda dice get to sit here and listen to you dissect the game. If we went pitch by pitch in this one, you would be like, what? Serious? There's a bunch of them like that too.
Like, there was one I did yesterday with the Mets and the and the Twins, day before yesterday. Pablo Lopez punched out, I think, 13. Mhmm. And made the Mets look awful. And they're great.
I mean, offensively, they're still good. Mhmm. You're talking about Alonso with a bunch of bombs, 40 plus, and Lindor, and he's just owning them because he does throw 97. And then when it's in here with a slider moving away, with a change up moving down and in, that's what every game is gonna look like pretty soon as soon as the pitchers wake up. There's only a few that have.
Well, even the fact that I was watching a game with my Noah, we're we've been kinda doing this, discussing your stuff when when we watch games now, and there was a I don't know who we were play who who who we were watching. It was the Angels. He likes to watch the SoCal team, so Angels, Padres, whoever. And we were watching a situation. Oh, it was it was Padres and somebody else, and it was what's his face?
The lefty that started in the all star game pitcher that was throwing. Snell? Yep. Yeah. Snell.
Blake Snell. So he was throwing. He was getting later in the game, and he was getting over about a hundred pitches. He's having a hard time really, really controlling it, and he he he kinda got it. He wasn't he was pitching backwards according to you, you know, throwing the fastball down in a way or throwing it way away, and it was in 95, whatever.
And he started to kinda get it. He started to go back up again, and it started to get more effective. You're going going backdoor backdoor curveball or slider, whatever his breaking ball is, and then inside with that change up. And he started just making him it was a Giants, I think, making him look foolish. And then he started to kinda fall in love with the fastball and kept going hard up, hard up, hard up.
And he had I think he had, we had he had one out. We had he had runner on first, or first and second or something like that. And, I was talking to Noah's. You know, it'd be a smart pitch right now is to go hard up and then maybe go with the backdoor curveball or slider or something or that change up down and in so you get that ground ball to get the to get the, to get induced to the the double play. Right?
And, like, that would have been the smart thing because if his his later in the game, his his pitch count's getting up there. He's getting ready to get yanked. You know, I'm sure they had a the pitch count on him. And it's like, well, why wouldn't we wanna throw the least amount of pitches possible to get them out? Instead, he kept going hard up and hard up, and I think they I think they ended up getting a getting a hit or a couple hits off them doing that.
It's like, that's kinda stupid because if you're trying to muscle them, trying to strike them out and muscle them, and and you're up, beyond your pitch count or getting close, why not just induce the ground ball? Get the ground ball for the and and it's set up perfectly for him to do that because he's got them, looking hard, you know, hard up, and then do something backdoor. Do breaking up. Well, the the answer is he's done he does that often, like, where he'll just go fastball up, swing and miss or foul it foul it off. Mhmm.
Fastball up, foul it off o two, and then change it down. See you. Three pitch strikeout. Yeah. Yeah.
Because he's creating that big speed differential out of the same tunnel. Yeah. But they you know, every day, they get a different scattering report, and that scattering report is really crazy full. Like, it's you know, it's so there's so much data. Mhmm.
And so you you got pitching coach and the and the catchers and the front office guys that are all trying to, you know, like, talk to this guy. Like, here's where this we we've seen weaknesses in this area. And so it's usually a scouting report that's causing that. Mhmm. But there's one overriding scouting report, and that is the swing flaws, the physical swing flaw in a hitter is one thing that is not put into any scouting reports.
Unbelievable. And the the timing tendencies and the angles that they hit pitches at, none of that stuff goes into a a scouting report. It's all result oriented. And as long as that's the case, you can hide a bunch of stuff. There's a bunch of stuff that just gets overlooked.
Mhmm. And and I think just based on the very first question I ever asked, what causes hard hit balls? And the answer is part physical. It's part timing. It's part pitch recognition.
And so there's a lot to it, but the the number one one that we're talking about today is what is the physical best swing that you can make. The most efficient, most powerful, most consistent, 100, one hundred, one hundred. How do you get that? And I think a lot of people miss out on the understanding what we're talking about. We're not saying everybody should do that.
We're trying to say that for kids listening at home, if you're trying to copy this Mike Trout move or or the the Aaron Judge move, you're not as big as them most likely and as strong as them and one of the best athletes in the world that's that's taking what I would call an inefficiency and making it be okay. Right? They're they're they're working it to a point where it's actually okay they're okay with with losing that. Because in the overall body of work, it's awesome. Why change it?
I had a meeting with a Reebok representative. I had a product, and they were considering, using it all over the country in their fitness places. Mhmm. And the head of Reebok told me and this is a long time ago before they could trace this stuff. He said, we spend $10,000,000 too much every year in advertising, but we have no idea.
So we're gonna keep doing it because the overall body of work is working, and we don't wanna mess it up. Right. And so that's when that was before they started tracking everything to find out exactly what's working and not. Right. But that's how hitters go about it is the overall body of work works.
Why mess with it? And I totally understand that until the pitching gets good. When the pitching maxes out what they're capable of, hitting with a less than maxed out swing is gonna be in big trouble. Right. If if Mike Trout again, we use Mike Trout.
Love Mike Trout. One of my favorite swing models. One of my favorite players all time. I Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. In the minor leagues with his dad. Oh, cool. That's cool. Yeah.
His his dad, well, he was a he was a level ahead of me. So one of my best friends, Todd, who you've met Mhmm. Bloodman is, he played with he played with them on the same team. Mhmm. But we're in the same organization at the same time.
His dad was a stud. His dad could hit, and his dad could he could really hit. He was not amazing on defense, and he didn't run like Mike. Mhmm. But he could hit.
Mhmm. But that that's the thing. It's like, we're not picking on Mike Trout. We're not it's I'm a huge fan. Yeah.
Yeah. Me too. And and my my son wears his shirt, NoTani, and, you know, that kinda thing. It's the the point is is that you have one of the best in the game and arguably, probably in history will be arguably in history, you know, depending on if he can stay healthy the rest of his career here. But we're taking one of the best in history.
And if he is 73 to 80 average exit velocity up and in, and you're a high school kid out there and you're trying to mimic the same thing, what are you gonna be? If you're not even not even a fraction of what he is, that seventy three eighty three is gonna look, what, 43, 50 three? I mean, gosh. That that's that's If you hit it at all. Because Yeah.
When you pull that in, the odds of you making solid contact are not all that great unless you have great hand eye coordination. I mean, that's 10 year olds. I have I not even 10 year olds. I got six or seven year olds in it that hard. Yeah.
It's it's it really is it's hard to argue because everything works right now. Everything works because the the the barrel is very full of fish. No matter where you swing, how you swing, you're gonna be running into some pitches at the big league level. Right. But what I what I see day in and day out is lower level softball and baseball players at the youth levels.
Pop up, pop up, pop up, topper, swing and miss, swing and miss, pop up, topper, and then one ball hit hard, and eight at bats, nine at bats. As opposed to all eight or nine at bats hit hard with you know, because you're in line with pitches. Mhmm. So it depends on what you call good too. You know?
It depends on what what the barometer is as to how you judge that kind of stuff. Right. Well, cool, Perry. I gotta I gotta jump out. I got a meeting to go to.
But, before we go, let people know I know we do this at at the end of everyone, and people are going, okay. Okay. I know. I know. But, where where can people find you?
You mentioned your your book, you know, your books that you that you have. You know, talk about that. They can get those on Amazon, the downright filthy pitching books. Mhmm. The And there's three of those?
Four, actually. Four? Okay. There's four. There's the, downright filthy pitching books one, two, and three, and then there's, getting filthy.
That's kinda like how to implement effective velocity Mhmm. On the pitching side. Did I cut out? No. You're still there.
I just see a black screen. Yeah. I don't know what happened to you today. You're you're we saw everything you were doing on the screen. Yeah.
I I have some, there's a couple things that are tentative. Every time I move my mic Mhmm. I I got a little I gotta get a new, a new cord because it's It's like the new antenna it's like the old antenna, the TB antennas. We had to we had to be in a perfect position to make sure there was no static. So they can do that.
The also, effectivevelocity.com, is the website, and then I'm at at EV perry husband on Twitter. I do some stuff. I'm gonna do more stuff now because, they've when you're when you're when you go through their membership thing, you you can create longer videos. So Mhmm. I'm gonna start doing some long form stuff on that as well.
Cool. Cool. Yeah. Definitely go out there. Those that are listening, watching, reading, whatever, go out there, check out Perry.
Part of part of my big thing is I I love Perry. I love his product, and I'm I'm working on trying to get it out there, with him and get it I want this pitching to change because it's gonna make the stuff I do on the hitting side, much better. It's gonna Yeah. Push worth my you know, Perry's hitters, my hitters, it's gonna push our hitters forward, whereas all the other ones, unfortunately, are are gonna fall a little bit. But, hopefully, they they can find the truth and and come in and and, we'll embrace them with open arms and and give them the give them the anecdote.
Think about it. That Batman scene where Batman was the original one with, Christian Bale, you know, the first one that he did where they released the gas, for Gotham City, the green gas, and everybody start hallucinating, going crazy and stuff. And, but but Batman had Christian Bale had the the antidote, and so he was able to move around without so that's that's that's what we're we kinda called that is, this is the antidote to for those hitters at least that are gonna be facing this kind of pitching is we have the antidote. And, yeah, I always tell my hitters there's stuff that you can learn what we're doing hitting, what you can learn if you pitch to do the opposite or what to look for, like what Perry was talking about in this talk. So, yeah, I I I can't give more and more respect to Perry and and his body of work and what he's done.
So, you know, thanks, Perry, for taking the time again, and we'll we'll keep keep this up. My pleasure, man. Thanks. It was always fun. Cool.
It's always too short too. I know. It seems like it's short, We could do this all day. Like you said, we have to take I have to take a nap after this a lot of times after our talk because it's just so much stuff. Yeah.
Alright, brother. Well, you take care, and I'll I'll keep in touch on this on this episode. Sounds good. Alright, brother. Take care.
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