Okay, reading batter's so how do you know what pitch How do you know what the batters weaknesses now To the untrained eye, you could look at all these batters and say, well, they look all the same to me or they look, you know, I can't tell what their weaknesses based on what they just look like in that picture I have the same swing Well, I'm going to teach you how you can identify each one of these pictures as a weakness, or maybe there isn't a weakness that you can identify and how to do that. So let's get moving. So the goal for this section is to find a batters weakness and how to identify what about are so weaknesses. So basically, you're going to try to ask your question is the batter's weakness and inside, outside high or low pitch, based on this information that you're going to learn here, it you'll be able to, to identify that if you can't identify a weakness, the basic thing that you want to do is disrupt a batter's timing there are some batters that you pitching outside pitch.

They hit it to the outside or the Right side of field, if they're right handed batter, you pitch him an inside pitch, they go to the left side of the field. So the next thing is if you can't identify a high low inside outside weakness, you need to disrupt them with different speed pitches. So, how do I read a batter? This is the meat of this course. question is have you ever read about it before? And if if yes, what are some key components that you look for?

If no, what do you think? What would you look for nor to identify batters weakness? Well, here are some of the we the points that you want to look at. You want to look at the wrists. How are the wrist cocked? Are they together?

Are they separated? You want to look at their grip, are they over grip? Are they loose, gripped? What is their stance in other words, their posture, their stance, the width of their stance will go over all this where they lined up on the plate and finally What is the speed of their swing? So, hitting is timing. So disrupting that timing as a pitcher is critical.

You don't want to throw the same pitches continuously and you don't want to have a pattern. So the pitcher and catcher you have to be on the same page and the coaches well, and you're working together it is teamwork, you've got to work together. If there's a disagreement, you know, get over it, move on and work together and learn from it and go with the next time. The more you ponder on the past, the worse it's going to be for everyone. If you're upset with each other about what the call was, and they got a hit, just move on to the next batter. So, look at this picture, I want you to pause the video and I want you to look for weaknesses based on those key components that I just listed.

So as we go through you're going to be able to identify if you're the pitcher catcher what pitch to call on these different matters. So, here's a clue to a weakness. One thing. If you ever get in a fight, okay, or you're a boxer and you're in a ring, I want you to take note of where the hands are to all these boxers. Why do you think their hands are where their hands are? Think about it.

Well, if you were a boxer and you dropped your hands down to your waist and you tried to box would that be the strongest punch that you didn't be able to lay From your waist height, or if you put your hands up at your ears and you tried to punch, or if you put them above your head, which some batters put their bats above their head, do you think that's the strongest point that you could actually swing the bat or make a punch? Know, your strongest the most natural position is what you see in these boxers right there. The hands are close to the shoulder and top of the chest. So when you bet, Your hands should be close to the shoulder and top of the chest. Now, I know it's uncomfortable to have it load your chest. But what we need to do is identify, first of all, where are the hands.

So let's take a look at some of these batters that we talked about earlier. On that are number one. Over here on the very left side, you can see the angle of the bat. That's one thing I didn't mention, but That goes hand in hand with the grip on the bat. So what is the angle of the bat? The next question is down below what are the width of the feet so these are evaluations is as a batter comes up and stands in the box, you have to have a quick evaluation.

This has to be second nature what the call. So right now I'm just helping you identify what the batter shouldn't shouldn't look like your bat should not be up vertical. Another batter is look on the distance of the plate. How far back Are they on the plate? What's the angle of the bat? Because it both of those bats are pretty vertical.

This better has a nice flat bat, which is what I like. Again, look at the feet position go on to the plate. And so you're going to learn how to identify what pitches to pitch. Now one thing I don't like about is how high her bed is. Remember the example of the boxers. You have your hands high she's probably not a real strong hitter because her hands are high and the other thing is she's going to have to drop Bat down to hit most pitches so that's going to take a little bit more time and she's probably a right side hitters what I'm going to guess so this is all from experience and just identifying batters here again in the red uniform she's got her knee hitch and she is way up in the box all right and look at the angle of her bat and look how high Her hands are now Is this making more sense and the angle of her bat again is up so my my guess is I would first some rice balls this girl cuz she's gonna pop up balls.

And this guy was just I don't know hopefully was just exaggerating or it was within the middle of like a getting warmed up kind of shot him but he's got a totally weak grip because he's right in the center of his chest as bad as vertical and that's just kind of in there because it was funny. Okay, identify weaknesses. Now that you know a little bit about these things. Pause the video. pretend like you're the catcher pitcher or the coach that has to make the next call. Pause the video and identify a few things that you might see as weaknesses.

All right, let's see if we had the same answers for batter number one. She has her arms and almost her left arm is almost locked. So if you are a boxer remember always go back to that boxer question. If you're a boxer, would you box like this? No, you're taking away all your strength. You're already fully extended.

You have no strength there. All this arm can do at this point is try to pull that bat through. She's going to be behind the ball. What else does she have a vertical bat. Her grip isn't too bad. But she's lost all her strength or a lot or she can gain more maybe she's a strong girl anyway, but she could gain more if she fixes things as a matter.

Now, what pitches are you going to pitch to that? We'll talk about that here in a minute. Again on this one, she's dropped her hands below Low. What else do we have an angle bat. And I didn't mention it or I didn't show you the arrow but she is quite far back in the box. On this picture here on the right, we have a bat angle and her hands are extended out away from your shoulders and I like real tight hands to the shoulders, so you can explode out just like a boxer.

So you can see the angle of her arm is down she went in back towards her right shoulder so she's she's getting rid of some power that she could have. That's not to say she's not she's a bad hitter. She's just not as good is what she could be. And this girl the same thing stream Lee far back. And then this girl over here on Auburn's team has a real high hitch. So she's got a hitch in her swing, inner wind up and then this kind of thing.

If I see that as a picture, again with somebody who has a high kick or that sort of thing you want disrupt that timing. So when she's in the year like that she's committed, she has to come back down and her timing and her swing is all going to be based on when that foot hits. So I don't like a step up in a swing like that. Okay, so check out these examples as well pause the video before you move on. Pause the video, figure out these stances, what weaknesses they have and then the next step is okay, I've identified a weakness what pitch goes with that weakness, and we'll talk about that here soon. So I'm not going over each weakness of those pictures, but I want to show you the hitch and the leg and why, I mean, she gets a good hit off of this but as a pitcher, you know how to actually throw to her now.

She's got a big hitch and that step. The timing, you gotta throw timing off and she's going to lose that strength in her swing. Okay, the next video is going to be a chart and we're going to talk about what pitches to throw based on the weaknesses that you identify in a batter.