Re: Mechanically who was the best hitter you have seen?
Great write-up Blzer. Honestly, I don't know a ton about hitting, but I'm in the process of learning from a good friend of mine who is held in pretty high regard for what he teaches. I'll PM you a link to his hitting articles since they explain it much better than I can. Since you teach hitting, you might be interested in what he's teaching as it's a bit different from the majority of ideas behind hitting. Let me know what you think.
I won't derail this thread more getting into specifics about hitting, but I'd love to talk more about it through PMs
Well on the flip side, I haven't heard anyone say what was right about it either. Sure, it's beautiful, but so is Transformers, and that's not being nominated for any Oscars. I keed. 
Anyway, the biggest issue is the upper half of the body, particularly the arm-length extension. A proper mechanic for making contact with the ball is from a bottom-hand pull, leading with the knob directly to it. He ignores that facet and throws the barrel to it. Any kid who would try and replicate this would roll over nine times out of ten. Thankfully he had quick wrists and good bottom-half torque though, because if you try this at home, you'll have horrible luck being able to square up an inside pitch in fair territory.
If there was any problem with his lower body, it would derive from his stance. It is so tall and narrow, that his "zero spot" (loading position before he swings) means that he has to take a wide stride and bend lower, and just like I said with Josh Hamilton, unless you know what you're doing, altering your eye line and banking on making expected contact off a tee, much less off 90+ MPH fastballs, is very difficult to do correctly. It looks good, especially when he hits it out and walks it off, but it's a fantasy that only he could do right. If more people could, you would probably see some variation of that more often, just because it also looks so damn sweet.
The final thing with his upper body that's a little different is tied into his stance. His bat starts upright, and his swing sort of begins with the same amount of uprightness. Now I wouldn't say that he has a loop swing in the sense that his entire backside drops and he has to compensate by coming up on the ball, but he throws the hammer down to it, giving it that loop effect. With his strength and his beat on it, he would be able to handle pitches at the top of the strike zone every so often, but that's not where the majority of his home runs came from. He had weaknesses that were difficult to exploit in case you made a mistake pitch on him.
Anyway, that's the best I could do. I never want to really "disagree" with anyone's opinions per se, but I just wanted to make sure people understood what the thread question really was. If it was "Who has the best looking swing" or even "Who has the best swing," I can see a lot of people saying Griffey simply for how awesome it looks. But when this question is asking about swing mechanics, it's very difficult to look at him as a first answer, or even a 30th answer. There are many other players in the game who have great mechanical swings who, perhaps, have poor timing or pitch recognition. It's really a tough thing to judge.
Anyway, the biggest issue is the upper half of the body, particularly the arm-length extension. A proper mechanic for making contact with the ball is from a bottom-hand pull, leading with the knob directly to it. He ignores that facet and throws the barrel to it. Any kid who would try and replicate this would roll over nine times out of ten. Thankfully he had quick wrists and good bottom-half torque though, because if you try this at home, you'll have horrible luck being able to square up an inside pitch in fair territory.
If there was any problem with his lower body, it would derive from his stance. It is so tall and narrow, that his "zero spot" (loading position before he swings) means that he has to take a wide stride and bend lower, and just like I said with Josh Hamilton, unless you know what you're doing, altering your eye line and banking on making expected contact off a tee, much less off 90+ MPH fastballs, is very difficult to do correctly. It looks good, especially when he hits it out and walks it off, but it's a fantasy that only he could do right. If more people could, you would probably see some variation of that more often, just because it also looks so damn sweet.
The final thing with his upper body that's a little different is tied into his stance. His bat starts upright, and his swing sort of begins with the same amount of uprightness. Now I wouldn't say that he has a loop swing in the sense that his entire backside drops and he has to compensate by coming up on the ball, but he throws the hammer down to it, giving it that loop effect. With his strength and his beat on it, he would be able to handle pitches at the top of the strike zone every so often, but that's not where the majority of his home runs came from. He had weaknesses that were difficult to exploit in case you made a mistake pitch on him.
Anyway, that's the best I could do. I never want to really "disagree" with anyone's opinions per se, but I just wanted to make sure people understood what the thread question really was. If it was "Who has the best looking swing" or even "Who has the best swing," I can see a lot of people saying Griffey simply for how awesome it looks. But when this question is asking about swing mechanics, it's very difficult to look at him as a first answer, or even a 30th answer. There are many other players in the game who have great mechanical swings who, perhaps, have poor timing or pitch recognition. It's really a tough thing to judge.
I won't derail this thread more getting into specifics about hitting, but I'd love to talk more about it through PMs
Dimmaggio had a 12 year old little league swing... ugh horrible and I'm a Yankee's fan.
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