How to hit a curveball

About once a week, I get an email from someone with a question related to "how to hit a curveball."

My response almost always begins with the approach and an understanding of the fundamentals.

Why?

Because you can have a swing as ugly as sin, but if you have the right approach and decent fundamentals, you can thrive while in the box.

On the other hand, you can have the most perfect swing in the world, but if your approach is off, your mechanics will break down. Guaranteed.

When I talk about Winning The At-Bat. This is what I mean.

In the video below, my buddy Trent Mogero touches on how he teaches his players how to hit the curveball.

It's a simple concept called Posting Up.

Once you begin to incorporate this concept into your at-bats, you will start to do more damage on mistake pitches left up in the zone.

Believe it.

Enter Trent Mongero.

Coach Trent Mongero On How To Hit The Curveball

"First of all, you need to understand the keys and differences between a quality breaking ball and a hanging breaking ball. 

The hanging breaking ball is one of the easiest pitches to hit and the ball goes a long, long way.

A quality thrown breaking ball stays down in the zone with tight spin and it's one we want to spit on, we want to take.

So what are the keys to a hanger? 

First of all, we have to train our vision from a soft to hard focus. Soft focus on the emblem of the cap about the distance of the release point.

Once the ball is upon release, transfer the eyes to a hard focus on the actual ball at release. Now it's in focus. With a hanging breaking ball, of course, the hand is going to be to the side of the ball as opposed to behind the ball. Like a fastball, it's to the side.

There's typically going to be some up hump up out of the hand on its way to the plate.

Also, we also know a breaking ball, of course, has top-spin as opposed to a fastball which has backspin.

So when we see the ball up in the zone, we train our eyes to look for that pitch, that breaking ball up in the zone, that's the one we want to attack.

The one with a tight spin down in the zone, spin on it for a ball."

- Trent Mongero

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