It's been a while since I posted one of our post-practice conversations and I thought this one held some value as players begin their couple week break. Here we talked after a game sim.
This particular night I let everyone choose what we did and the overwhelming consensus was to do a game sim. We went through a full pre-game routine. Players did their tee work, went into front toss work, and then we gave everyone 3 round of batting practice before we started the game. The rounds were as follows:
- Hit & Run - barrel control round
- Runner on 3rd, less than two outs, infield back - middle of the field round
- Free
I want the players to get used to that routine. If you play a long time, that batting practice is very structured and you need to build a pre batting practice routine allowing you to get the feels you want.
Here was our post game sim conversation with a summary below:
What We Control
The main point of emphasis post game sim is controlling controlables. Obviously, we don't know how much range the imaginary center fielder has. We don't know if the shortstop has a cannon. At the end of our at-bat, the result isn't the best way to evaluate how we did.
I always say the number one thing to give yourself a chance in the box is pitch selection. If you swing at pitches in the strike zone (or good pitches to hit) and take pitches out of the strike zone, you are automatically a harder hitter to pitch to. Until you do this you have ZERO chance to hit. There are a handful of hitters in MLB history that were "bad ball hitters" and hit pitches well out of the strike zone consistently hard (Pablo Sandoval and Vladimir Guerrero come to mind).
Next we have to only worry about what we control. In a game sim, if you hit a ball on the barrel, you did your job. It's easy to get frustrated when you're lining out, but you need to stick with the process. Ask yourself what you could have done differently and sometimes the answer is "Nothing".
As we get closer to the start of baseball season, we will do more game sim work. Our hitters get to work on the competition aspect of the game as well as get to work on pitch selection. Remember that the game is called "baseball" and not "baseball swing". Mechanical work is important, but being able to that mechanical work into the context of a game is really what we're striving for.
