On Hitters Adding Movement to Their Loads
Recently, I wrote a piece about the benefits of hitters simplifying the mechanical process in their load or gather. For many hitters, moving too much in the lead-up to their barrel entering the hitting zone can create inconsistent timing and suboptimal reciprocal movements. Taking noise out of the swing can better prepare a hitter to have a consistent bat path; if you always know where your barrel is in space, you’re better equipped to hit the sweet spot more frequently. The thing is, not all hitters are the same. What works for one may not work for another, and that is the beauty of baseball.
I’m afraid I may have left some readers with the impression that simplification is the only path to improvement, when in reality, some hitters need to add more movement to their process to put their body in a position to be athletic. More movement does not always equal more complication if that movement is in the right direction. If a hitter stagnates their mechanics too much, they could be taking away from their potential. The kinetic chain needs flowing energy to function at full capacity. To some people, cueing simplicity and less movement can be harmful.
Last year, when Jarred Kelenic was trying to find the swing mechanics that would work for him, he led himself to something that looked very simple but still wasn’t adjustable enough to be the hitter he wanted to be. This swing is from October 2022:
October 4, 2022
Kelenic was a much better hitter in the final month of the season relative to the rest of the year, but this is still far off from where he is now. As a powerful but not very stretchy athlete, he needs to maintain fluidity and looseness throughout his process. The adjustments he made in the offseason have done exactly that. Here is a recent swing of his from last week:
May 7, 2023
By adding more movement to his load (hand row), Kelenic has allowed his body to create optimal reciprocal movements. I know I throw that term around a lot, but it’s for good reason. Every move an athlete makes (or doesn’t) leads directly to another move. Last year, Kelenic’s stagnant hands led to a steeper and more inconsistent bat path. For some hitters, picking their bat up off their shoulder and firing is exactly what they need to do. But for somebody like Kelenic, it didn’t create enough stretch to get his barrel on plane deeper in the hitting zone, therefore creating more exploitable holes in his swing and improper balance in his body. The row leads to a reciprocal movement of his hands getting on plane early and staying on plane later.
Another great example of this is Jonah Heim. After struggling as a left-handed hitter in 2022 with an 83 wRC+, he added more movement and space for separation in his swing, and it has paid off in the early going. The first swing below is from September of 2022, and the next is from a few weeks ago.
September 24, 2022
April 28, 2023
Heim opened up his stance and added a slight leg lift to give his body a chance to create separation between his torso and hips. His swing in 2022 was merely okay, and there was clearly more to be had. On the line drive to center field, he was so close to really getting a hold of the pitch, but his hips were never activated, limiting his barrel to a smaller piece of the hitting zone. With a fastball on the outer third, he could only get it off the end of the bat despite being on time because that’s all his bat could cover.
For a hitter like Heim, it’s also extremely difficult to cover breaking balls low and in. His posture was too upright relative to his bat path. To get to breaking balls in that area of the strike zone, you have to get into your hips if you can’t contort your upper body to get on plane. By opening his stance and cueing a rotation into his rear hip, he created the amount of separation needed for his hands to start their down swing deeper in the hitting zone. It’s not completely transparent from this angle, but if you pay attention to the back of his belt, you’ll see he is showing more this year than last. That means he is now creating enough counter-rotation to allow his bat to get on plane earlier. He didn’t even need to make an adjustment with his hands to get to this position; it is the direct result of him creating separation. This change has boosted his wRC+ as a lefty from 83 last year to 141 this year.
The last hitter I’m going to use as an example is Brent Rooker. After struggling to find his groove to begin his career, he is firing on all cylinders and leading the league with a 200 wRC+. He always had the power and ability to be an above-average big league hitter, but he hadn’t found the exact recipe he needed to be consistent. This year, he adjusted his posture and hand position to create more torso bend and slightly more hand movement. This is subtler than Heim and Kelenic but still serves as an example of how creating more movement and fluidity can completely change a hitter’s profile. Here is one swing from last year and another from this year to show the change:
September 9, 2022
May 6, 2023
Like I said, this is a subtle addition of movement. Last year, Rooker put his hands where he wanted them to fire, but the lack of movement created a slight bat comb that looked slightly forced. His body wanted to move! By not putting his hands in a position to create the smooth movement, he rushed the hand comb. For a hitter who is whiff-prone even when he’s at his best, this can be problematic: a rushed bat comb can lead to even more whiffs because of an inconsistent bat path.
This year, Rooker has embraced the movement and a slow load. By setting his hands lower and closer to his back hip, he is now letting them move slowly into the slot from where he wants to fire, and the quick hitch has disappeared. Combine that with more torso bend, and you have a hitter who is perfectly balanced and on time at pitch release and when the pitch is entering the zone. That improvement has resulted in a drastic Barrel% jump, from 4.8% last year to 20.8% this year (97th percentile). This is a more subtle example compared to Heim and Kelenic, but it still illuminates how embracing movement (even if it is a tiny bit) can improve a hitter’s balance and bat path.
More often than not, the answer for a hitter is simplification. But absolutes do not exist in baseball. Each player’s body and capabilities are different: some can be productive by hardly moving at all, and others need an open stance with a two-phase leg kick that puts their body in a proper position to swing. Everything is on a spectrum. For these hitters, embracing movement has worked very well.
Esteban is a contributing writer at FanGraphs. One of his main hobbies is taking dry hacks every time he sees a bat.
IIUC, the article’s conclusion is that Kelenic introducing movement of his hands in his “load” (in his case, the movement is a downward pull) is causing some kind of kinetic response that gets him on plane. I would contend that simply starting his swing from the much lower position that results from that downward pull (his hands seem to be as much as 8 inches lower than last season when he starts to swing) is the change that has unlocked him.
My contention is that he would be better off still not having all that pre-swing “load” movement that gets his hands to that location … he should just start his hands off there in the first place. To my mind, pre-swing movement is the enemy of a repeatable swing. It is extremely difficult to adjust the timing of your swing between fastballs and breaking balls when you have movement in your pre-swing load, and you invariably get off-balance — advantage pitcher.
That load movement might be part of his timing that has improved his results. It also appears to have come with a change where he starts more upright than he had been before. That might help with his pitch recognition.
Again, I am so far from an expert in this area that it is not even funny, but that’s my thinking here.
I’m probably the least expert on any of this, but I think the key is the timing of the extra movement. Finding a way to load and also be balanced at the time the pitch leaves the pitchers hand seems to be the key for all three examples here. Looking at Rooker’s “before” swing, he looks too unbalanced towards his back foot when the pitch is released, which means he’s probably spending some of the precious next 0.2 seconds getting rebalanced before whipping his bat through. In his “after” swing, he’s added hand movement, but it’s concurrent with his leg lift and (most importantly) it all happens before the pitch is released, letting him be well balanced for the whole flight of the ball and also having a quieter looking swing.
Timing and rhythm exists my guy
It’s going to be a real shame for readers when some team hires you and you end up leaving the public sphere, but it will certainly be well-deserved.
Thank you for a whole article to address my question from the last one!
These are some really interesting examples. I tend to agree with LenFuego here that at the end of the day it matters where your hands are, and how much control over their momentum you have, when you start your swing. For example, it looks like Kiem is now drifting his hands back before he starts his leg kick. This gets the load started and momentum going, and he maintains coordination through the swing while generating more power. The slow movement allows him to maintain timing on a pitcher who may vary delivery speeds as well, since its easier to uncoil a swing when the body is under control. Same is true for Rooker – instead of a twitchy hand wiggle, he glides his hands back slightly so they are primed for release of the kinetic energy. This is technically adding movement, but its subtle, controlled, and has a clear rationale. I think of it like a snake attacking: they coil up slowly to build kinetic energy, then release when the time is right.
I really love these breakdowns and discussion. This is something that is often hard for a layperson to pick up watching live.
Rad article. Saw Rooker on MLB Network the other day breaking down his swing/approach and it was really interesting. Sounds like he definitely knows his stuff when it comes to the analytical side of hitting.
If you told me that Brent Rooker would turn into 2002 Jim Thome I would have laughed.
I think this is some good analysis but I always find it a bit difficult to bring together swing analysis with results.
I’m not saying the analysis is bad, in fact I would agree with some of the stuff but I think it always is a bit of cherry picking.
You take a hitter with improved numbers, compare his swing, see that he holds the hands differently and then come up with a conclusion why that is better now.
I’m not saying the analysis has to be wrong but it is biased, there might be other guys who made the same adjustments and got worse results and other guys who made no adjustments and got better results.
Let’s take rooker for example. He is doing way better and his K rate is down but his swinging strike rate is the same as last year. So has he really improved? Or is he riding a hot streak?
Again I’m not saying this is bad analysis and that swing mechanics can’t make a difference but I still think the approach of looking for hitters with improved stats, analyse their mechanical changes and then find an explanation why the new stuff works better is a bit flawed and doesn’t have very high predictive value.
Hopefully in the future hawk eye and other tech will give us biomechanical data that actually can be statistically correlated to performance at a large scale.
Appreciate the article!
I think it was Big Papi who said: when you’re swinging good they call it a “trigger” and when you’re swinging bad they call it a “hitch.”