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If you've watched a couple youth baseball games, you'll notice very quickly that the team who regularly puts the ball in play usually wins. This is simply because defense is hard, and most youth baseball teams have high amounts of mental mistakes on defense, low fielding percentages, and poor defensive range. Thus, teams win more often when they consistently make contact and put the ball in play. And with youth baseball becoming more competitive, more organized, and more result-oriented, kid hitters are naturally feeling the pressure to do the things it takes to help their team win.
Hitting is not only one of the hardest feats in sports, it's also perhaps the most nerve wracking. Everyone is watching you. Everyone is pulling for you. Everyone is relying on you. So the last thing you want to do is let them down. You learn very quickly that to make yourself, your teammates, your coaches, and your parents happy, you should put the ball in play and give your team a chance to score. Don't swing and miss. Don't strikeout. Put the ball in play, get on base, and make something happen. At whatever cost - even if it means swinging softly and beating out a 12 hopper. And heck, by the time you score and reach the dugout, you're getting high fives and fist pumps and nobody remembers that you reached base by squibbing a ball past the pitcher's mound.
Look, it's not a bad thing that kid hitters are adapting to competition. They are developing new ways to win. They are honing skills (bat control, hand-eye coordination, plate discipline, etc.) that not only help their teams win now, but will help them earn playing time for years to come. The problem is that by focusing on helping their team and getting on base at any cost, kids are actually retarding their hitting development and hurting their chance for real success down the line.
The number one hitting skill kids must develop is how to swing the bat quickly, and ironically, youth baseball leagues are killing this skill. Dumbing down hitting with science proves the importance of bat speed; the better your bat speed, the better the ball will travel when hit. The dilemma comes from the fact that when kids swing quickly, they miss more pitches. And although it's good for the kid to swing quickly, it's not always good for their team.
Some will argue that the first thing you must teach to kids is bat control - not bat speed - because contact becomes before power. Although it's true that contact must happen to create power, kids should be focusing on developing bat speed (i.e. power) before bat control, because that is the harder skill to develop and the rarer skill to find. This is just like pitching or baserunning; developing arm speed and running speed is more important for kids than developing pitching control or baserunning smarts, because velocity and speed are harder to develop and harder to find.
Like arm speed and sprinting speed, increasing a youth player's bat speed is difficult because kids struggle with controlling their muscles and increasing the pace at which their bodies work. Thus to improve their fast-twitch muscles, kids must constantly practice going "full speed", and intentionally work on improving their arm speed, running speed, or bat speed. Unfortunately working on these skills not only takes a lot of time, but can actually cause kids to take a step back or two when in competition. Like a pitcher who starts throwing harder but loses control for a few outings, hitters who increase their bat speed may lose some of their bat control for a period of time.
But here's the fact of the matter... high school, college and professional coaches know it's a lot harder to improve a player's power at the plate than it is to teach them a little bat control. Coaches would rather have hitters who come to them swinging quickly and hitting with power. They can teach these players to back off a bit with two strikes, or on a hit and run, so that their contact rate increases. This is similar to power pitchers. Coaches (and scouts) would rather have power arms in their program, because they can more easily teach command and control. It's much more difficult to add hitting power and pitching velocity once kids become adults.
So start now and tell your sons, students, and players to stop swinging softly. And start teaching them to swing quickly. Use a radar gun to measure the exit speed of balls hit off their bat. Use a swing speed device to measure their bat speed. Use tee drills, soft-toss drills, and self-toss drills to force kids to increase their bat speed. Use creative ways to encourage swinging quickly and discourage the horrible habit of swinging softly. Record their bat speeds and reward their progress. Stop focusing on results (batting averages, on-base percentages, wins, runs scored, etc.) and start focusing on creating bat speed. Mechanics will come. Runs will come. Wins will come. And when kids stop swinging softly and start swinging quickly, success will most definitely come.
-- Ben Campopiano
