I Bet You Are Spending Way Too Much Time Trying to Fix the Symptoms in Your Hitting Mechanics ...Instead of the Disease

- Bill Mooney, BioForce Baseball and chief analyst for WebBall's video analysis service.

When I received the email from WebBall for my input on error spotting and correction, it was like seeing that big, fat fastball coming straight down the middle of the plate. I jumped at the chance. As a baseball trainer and coach, I have found over the years that most coaches and players spend way too much time trying to fix a symptom in their hitting mechanics. If they would spend just a few minutes working on the source of the problem, the disease, it will get the job done much faster with a lot less headache too.

Most players and coaches come to a solution far too quickly without really figuring out the true problem. The result becomes a temporary band-aid on the mechanical problem.

Let me explain.

Take a second and think about symptoms and diseases. What are the differences?

I'm sneezing my head off, feeling miserable. I'm sure you've been there. I've got to fix this problem, and fast. So I head to good ol' Doc 'Moonlight' Graham for a visit. He asks a ton of questions to figure out what's wrong.

My doc is looking at what's causing the runny nose and the sneezing. He could easily fix the congestion with a couple of powerful, horse-sized pills, but the good doc wants to figure out what is causing the problem. Do I have a cold? Maybe. Allergies to something I ate or the grasses outside? Could be. Pepper stuck up my nose? Probably not, but you never know.

Bottom line, the cause of the runny nose is the "disease." The runny and gunky nose is the "symptom." My doc will give me medicine to fix the disease, and then the symptoms should soon go away.


In hitting mechanics, most folks look at the obvious flaw, or symptom.

Here's a typical example of a hitting problem. Our stud third baseman has been hitting weak ground balls to the left side of the infield and lunging towards the ball.

Hmmm. Easy fix right? Coach yells from the third-base coach's box, "Stay back!"

What? Stay back? What the heck does that mean….stay back? That's a defensive way to hit. Ever see an infielder stay back when a ground ball is hit to him? Not very often. How about a pitcher "staying back?" Not a hard thrower….they don't stay back.

So what's the solution to this problem? Well, it's simple really.


The first step in diagnosing, or spotting, the error begins with your hitting mechanics principles. Some folks call them fundamentals, but I call them principles. Why? A fundamental is a foundation, a basis. A principle is a primary truth from which other rules are derived, a professed rule of action.

I'm kind of splitting hairs here, but a principle to me is a stronger statement. I believe you should have strong principles in your hitting, fielding, running, and pitching mechanics.

In hitting mechanics, I teach five principles:

1. Weight Transfer to Generate Energy
2. Stable Posture for Consistency
3. Timing Mechanism
4. Torque for Power
5. Balanced Finish

Anything outside these 5 principles becomes your style, or personal signature. Any of your corrections, or fixes, to your mechanics should be for the purpose of getting back to your principles.


So our stud third baseman is not hitting with authority or power, and he's lunging at the ball.

What's the fix? What's the correction? One option to correct the symptom is to “stay back.” That's the quick Band-Aid to solve the lunge problem, but it will create a lot of other challenges in his mechanics like dramatically reducing power. Who wants that? Getting rid of a weight shift will also reduce his ability to adjust to the off-speed pitches, not to mention becoming very defensive in the batters box.

A body lunge and a slower bat. Less pop off the bat.

The Typical Fix?

Staying back. Means different things to different people.

The Disease? 

His timing is poor. Principle 3

You see, our player's lunge is not necessarily caused by our first principle, a weight shift towards the pitcher. It is because he has committed to swing at the pitch before the pitch is in the batter's wheel-house. So what happens when the batter lunges? He has to slow things down, decelerate the bat and the batter goes after the pitch with his body to meet the ball.

The Better Fix?  

Our teammate should work on not committing his shoulders and hands to the swing until after his weight has been shifted to the front leg and the ball is in his wheel house. Easier said than done. It takes discipline and the right drills to challenge him, but the more he works at it, the more he becomes aware of the problem, the sooner he can get back on track.

You see, we went back to review my 5 principles to find a fix for the problem. What does the typical hitter or coach do? They go right to fixing the thing they can quickly see, the symptom.

Let's take a look at another typical problem with hitters.

Pulling the Head

The Typical Fix?

Keeping your eye on the ball or watching the ball hit the bat.

The Disease? 

Our principle number 2: keep your posture stable.

The coach sees our hitter's head pulling up and away from the plate. Is the problem his head? No. I'll go back to my principles to see what might be causing his head to fly like he's been slapped in the back with a bad sunburn.

His problem is that he has changed his athletic stance and his spine angle has straightened up. He stood up. The head movement is a symptom of the posture change. There could be a timing issue too if the shoulders and hands commit before the weight is shifted to the front side.

The Better Fix?  

Work on drills that will help him stabilize his athletic stance throughout the entire swing. Work on timing as well.

The voice from the cornfield tells Ray Kinsella in “Field of Dreams,” “If you build it, he will come.”

I'm telling you right now, not from a cornfield but from WebBall…..

"Fix the disease, Coach, and they will perform."

WebBall wanted us to keep our article short and sweet. I'm getting close to the word limit, but I could easily go on for pages and pages and share drills and drills to help you. I'll save that for another time. I look forward to writing some follow-up articles on Error Spotting and Correcting as well as principle-based training.

When error spotting and correcting, you should ask yourself:

1. Are you looking at the symptom or the disease?
2. Is your correction principle based?
3. Do you have your hitting principles defined?

"Fix the disease, Coach, and they will perform."

Editor's Note: Comments added below BEFORE the end of voting were removed so as not to bias other voters. Now that voting is tabulated and authors revealed, we welcome additional insights and opinions.