The Most Teachable Swing - Chris O'Leary

by Chris O’Leary

Version Beta 3 Updated 2014.4.2

Carlos Beltran The Most Teachable Swing

Legal Stuff Except as noted, this document, and the words and pictures in it, are copyright © Chris O’Leary 2014. All rights reserved. This document may not be published, in whole or in part, to a web site, public or private, without the prior written permission of Chris O’Leary. Chris O’Leary is not affiliated or associated with Major League Baseball, this document is not endorsed by Major League Baseball, and all of the opinions expressed in this document are Chris O’Leary’s. If you happen to come across this flipbook on the Internet or via a friend and find it to be valuable, please understand that it isn’t something that I just give away for free. Instead, I charge $9.95 for it. This flipbook is the product of years of work and thousands of dollars of investment on my part. On average, I have to go to 10 games to get one really valuable clip. You can purchase a legal, licensed copy of this flipbook at… http://www.chrisoleary.com/buy/ My family and I thank you. Chris O’Leary April 2014

How to Use This Flipbook When I use this flipbook in front of an audience, you will notice that I am constantly rolling backwards and forwards through the slides, pointing out not just the positions and shapes but also the movements. If you want to get the maximum value out of this eBook, you should do the same; you should set this eBook up so that only one page occupies the screen and then page back and forth from page to page, watching the movements. The easiest way is to download this PDF to your computer and open it using Adobe Reader or some other application that can display PDFs one page at a time. In Acrobat select View > Read Mode or View > Page Display > Single Page View. You can then use the right and left – or up and down – arrows on the keyboard to go through the frames of each clip and get a sense of how each movement looks and works.

About This Flipbook I have been studying Carlos Beltran’s swing since 2009, when I obtained my first 60 FPS clips of him when he was playing for the Mets. When he came to the Cardinals, I made it my mission to get as many 120 FPS, high speed clips of his swing as I could. The thing about Carlos Beltran’s swing that I find so striking and compelling is its simplicity. There is no leg lift or leg kick. Instead, he just takes a step back when the pitcher starts his delivery and then takes a step forward as or just after the pitcher releases the pitch. The simplicity of Carlos Beltran’s swing also makes it extremely teachable. Any young hitter would be well-served by studying and copying Carlos Beltran’s swing.

Some of the things that make Carlos Beltran’s swing so teachable include his… Stride Carlos Beltran takes a short, low step into the ball. That lets him transfer energy into the pitch without hurting his balance. Slight Uppercut Rather than keeping his front elbow down and the barrel above the ball and his hands, Carlos Beltran swings with a slight uppercut. He lets the barrel fall below his hands because that lets him match the planes of his swing and the pitch. Point Of Contact Carlos Beltran is one of the best hitters at consistently getting to the optimal position at the Point Of Contact, with his back arm bent 90 degrees and forming the Power L. He also doesn’t extend until after contact.

Stance: Contrast Carlos Beltran’s bent knee, athletic stance with the upright, locked-knee, un-athletic posture that you see in so many young hitters and some older ones (like Pete Kozma). What Carlos Beltran’s posture does is it makes his swing efficient; it lets him power his swing, and adjust to pitches, with his entire body and not just his arms. I also like how Carlos Beltran holds his bat. Rather than holding it vertically, Beltran holds his bat roughly halfway between vertical and horizontal, making it easy to get the barrel around to the ball.

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Striding Forward While Staying Back: Notice how Carlos Beltran strides forward while keeping the knob of the bat in place. His head also moves forward less than his front foot does.

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Bat Wrap: Many people, if they were looking at a younger hitter, would label what you see on this page as “bat wrap” and try to coach them out of it. However, the fact that Carlos Beltran does it suggests that bat wrap isn’t the problem that many people believe it is. I am especially sensitive to this topic because, in an effort to fix Andres Torres’ “problem” with bat wrap, the Giants robbed his lefty swing of much of its efficiency by inhibiting his load.

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Heel Plant: Rather than letting his hands leak forward, Carlos Beltran kept his hands back into heel plant. Only now is the knob starting to come around and forward. That helped him create Separation between his hips and his shoulders and increased the efficiency of his swing.

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Front Shoulder Opening: Instead of keeping his front shoulder closed and his shoulders in place during his swing, Carlos Beltran’s front shoulder is rotating open to deliver the barrel to the hitting zone. At this point, the linear, translational portion of his swing has ended and the rotational portion has begun (aka a linear move into rotation).

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Compactness: One of the reasons why Bat Wrap isn’t the problem that people think it is is because it helps a hitter maximize their compactness as they start to rotate. That, in turn, minimizes the hitter’s rotational inertia and maximizes the rate at which they can rotate. Notice how compact Carlos Beltran gets, and then stays, in the next 4 or 5 frames.

The Box: Notice how Carlos Beltran’s front arm, his shoulders, and the barrel are all rotating in the same plane and at the same rate, meaning that he sets and then turns what some people call “The Box.” That also means that he turns the barrel and swings with his entire body, not just his hands or arms.

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Holding the Hinge Angle: Rather than slowly sweeping the barrel around his hands with his hands, Carlos Beltran is still holding the Hinge Angle, the roughly 90 degree angle between his front forearm and the barrel of the bat. As a result, most of the movement of the barrel is being done by the rotation of his hips and shoulders. That will maximize the force with which the barrel will rotate around in his hands.

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Front Knee Extension: Notice how Carlos Beltran’s front knee is extending into the Point Of Contact, helping to finish the rotation of his hips and pulling his back heel off the ground. The extension of Carlos Beltran’s front knee also stops the forward movement of his body, which helps to transfer energy from his body to the barrel.

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Not Squishing the Bug: While a few frames earlier on you might have been able to say that Carlos Beltran at least looked like he was squishing the bug, it’s obvious that he doesn’t squish the bug into and through the Point Of Contact. Instead, his hips pull his back leg around and pull him up onto the point of his back foot.

Point Of Contact: Notice how Carlos Beltran’s back arm is bent 90 degrees, forming what is know as the Power L. His head moved only slightly and he isn’t looking directly down at the ground, or even the ball, as some people teach.

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Extension: Carlos Beltran is at full extension, but 3 or 4 frames after the Point Of Contact, not at the Point Of Contact. That is because extension is the effect of a good swing and not the cause of a good swing. If he were to try to hit every pitch at full extension, Carlos Beltran would lose his ability to adjust to off-speed pitches, at a minimum.

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The Telltale Arc: The problem with many of the swing planes that you see hitting instructors demonstrate is that they aren’t physically possible or even desirable. It’s not possible to pull off a V or check-shaped swing plane while swinging a 30+ ounce bat (without hurting your wrists) and you wouldn’t want to if you could. Instead, a high-level swing plane is disc-shaped and centered around the spine and the hands. Good hitters tilt over the plate to align this disc with the path of the pitch for the maximum amount of time.

Long-time readers will notice the similarity between the swing of

Carlos Beltran and two of my other favorite swings, those of George Brett and Caitlin Benyi.

Where to go From Here This is just one of my flipbooks and it contains excerpts from a few of the many flipbooks and clips that I have in my library. Some of those flipbooks are available for sale individually and all of them are available to those who purchase one or more of my hitting bundles. To see what hitting and other products are available, including drills that will help you develop the movements that you see in this flipbook, go to… http://www.chrisoleary.com/buy/ For more information about the concepts and ideas discussed in this eBook, you can contact me via…

E-mail: [email protected] Phone: 314.494.1324.

More of my writings can be found on my free, public web site…

www.chrisoleary.com