In golf circles that “hinge” is generally referred to as ”lag.” Study a slo-mo of Tiger’s swing and notice how when his hands are to the ball, the club’s shaft is parallel to the ground, essentially the butt of the club is pointing directly down the target line. From ther the club head has to explode into the ball to catch up with the hands it is trailing. That move isn’t really an unhinging but really a rotational move. Cano’s swing best replicates that rotational move. I think you could fairly call him a top hand hitter.
Harper, Ohtani, Griffey all end up with their hands ahead of the plate, but the barrel of the bat still directly behind the plate. Then the tremendous rotational/“unhinging” speed of the barrel allows it to catch and pass the hands. I tend to think of “hinge/unhinge” as the sort of movement you make when striking a nail with a hammer.
But the greater the lag, generally the greater the clubhead/bat speed. It is a much more explosive move. Mays, Aaron, Williams, Musial, Killebrew all tended to be hands hitters, in that they kept the hands more within the frame of the body. The stroke was shorter than a Griffey’s, for example. By the way, I am interested in Harper’s swing, in that he gets up on his front foot with his back foot off the ground. Mays and Aaron did that and I find it Old School. I wrote something about “front foot hitters” a couple of years ago.
Doc, in golf there is another concept referred to as “X-Factor.” It is the difference in how “open” the hips are compared to the shoulders, in degrees. The modern power hitter explodes his hips open, but the shoulders stay much more square until the last moment. Golf Digest analyzed the swings of the longest hitters a few years ago, for example , Bubba Watson, and found they had the greatest X-Factor. That helps create lag, as well. Is there an aikido concept that goes with that?
Cano is renowned for his ability to stay inside the ball, but Griffey may have been better. I think that is where much of his power came from. As I wat h him swing now, he reminds me of Sergio Garcia. Both were slighter guys, but generated tremendous power by taking a very inside path to the ball. “Casting” generally puts you on an outside path, and a less powerful one. I was a caster.