Whippier = more lag.
Watch a Sammy Snead, or the old T. Woods, as they hammered a drive. They had a power squat going, They "sat down" into the ball. Their weight was underneath them, not flying forward. Funny concept: Keep your weight here to hit the ball further there.
But I'll bet if you watch Taijuan throw you will see the same dynamic. As he's on his right leg, he will "squat" just before the left leg comes forward.
George Forman did it, too.
And Jan Stenerud. Doc remembers him.
You get the idea.
Keeping the "weight underside" allows the hips to explode efficiently (the key word) and, in baseball/golf, lag and power to develop.
I'll bet that if we look at a slo-mo comparison of Smoak, this year vs. early last, you'll see the bat stay cocked later in the swing. By the way, I bet that allows him to stay centered on a pitch and to better drive it the other weigh.
Doc, wasn't Charlie Lau, now that I think about it, all about weight back and beneath?
Good stuff.
moethedog, now beginning to buy in on the Smoak longterm optimism.
Man, I've come a long way.
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At this point, we're kind of piling on here ... all y'all have seen the same things we have. The guy looks like a hitting star now. We're simply waiting to see if he falls back into his old form. And man, it doesn't look like he's going to, does it?
Last post, we brushed up against the Tools Scouting camera angle and up against the Sabr scouting angle. How about a stop by the Aiki dojo?
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One thing that you'll notice, as Smoak gets ready to hit, is that he does the Kyle Seager "settle." He shifts on his thighs, sort of like a Sumo wrestler, "screwing" his weight into the ground.
Earlier this year we touched on the Aikido concept, "Keep Weight Underside." Mike Napoli is one of the best; we used him as an example. Keep Weight Underside is one of O'Sensei's four golden principles ... you know how Ted Williams reduced hitting to Get A Good Pitch, Be Quick, Hit It Through the Middle, and there was one other ... they were non-negotiable. You HAVE to get your pitch -- it's not okay to just whale away with no idea, right?
In aikido you HAVE to keep your weight underside.
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Think of it this way ... imagine that you have to move a washing machine. Before you pick that momma up off the ground, you're going to screw your feet into the ground, right? Make sure that you are symmetrical around the work, the lift ... make sure that your backside is not "floating" but that YOU are low and attached to the earth? Then and only then can you accomplish your goal.
Seager does this without even thinking about it, apparently. Smoak learned it this year, when he did the slow-mo swinging practice. Think about it and you'll see that you AUTOMATICALLY "Keep Weight Underside" if you have to hold your own weight up for 30 seconds during a sports motion. You need a lot of power to manage your own weight in a lunge...
This left Smoak's swing muscular but static in April. We remarked on it at the time. His fly balls were going 300 feet.
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Mike Blowers noted, expertly, a few weeks ago ... Smoak's swing is becoming whippier lately. Ask Mo' Dawg whether it is okay to "muscle" a tee shot, or whether you need some looseness in your wrists? Smoak has now integrated these two elements.
We're not just conjecturing here. You can see it in live motion and in slo-mo; he is now sinking his weight WHILE hinging his wrists and keeping loose fingers. (Blowers mentioned about the looseness in the hands now.)
It takes some guys a while to figure it out. Took Carlos Pena 8 years. If you are going to need 5 years to learn how to play major league baseball, as Justin Smoak has needed, it helps a whale of a lot to be a 1st-round draft pick.
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Counting the Days Till the #3 Slot
In the previous article we mentioned (along with Paul Konerko) there being Shin-Soo Choo, Billy Butler, Alex Gordon, and Nick Swisher as the .370-.380 OBP guys in the AL who have good-but-not-great power. Precisely! the guys we've been trying to acquire.
Ironically this now makes Smoak the definition of a 3-hole hitter. Your MOTO hitters need both OBP and SLG, but the guy with the most OBP-vs-SLG is the guy who hits 3rd, getting more AB's. As your hitters tend more toward SLG they drop down the lineup.
Sabermetrically, Eric Wedge might prefer for Rauuullll to hit his HR's after a Justin Smoak walk, not before a Justin Smoak walk. The instant that Wedge /cosigns on Smoak's in-game confidence, that is the instant at which Justin Smoak needs to move to the 3 hole. You gotta walk in front of your homers, and Smoak is the walks guy.
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We used to watch Shin-Soo Choo a fair bit, back at Cheney. Physically he looks quite a bit like Smoak, doesn't he? About the same batspeed, about the same body, fairly similar swing shape ... in no small part due to the fact that Choo has a "keep weight underside," muscly swing. (The Indians actually bat Choo leadoff a lot, to take full advantage of those delicious ball fours.)
If Smoak were to jell as that kind of player, it's not like he'd be coming out of nowhere. He's a #11 overall draftee, a high first rounder.
Choo's lifetime slash line is .288/.388/.464. If you were Justin Smoak, would you (now) give yourself any less responsibility than that?
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Comments
Load and lag properly balanced and executed is not limited to golf but even kicking field goals. It is pure physics and, like gravity, can't be ignored. That is why a thin guy can hit a golf ball 50 yards past the big linebacker. Fun to check box scores and see Smoak getting it!
Watching a game last week, I was struck by how 'crouched' Ibanez's stance is now. In Baker's great article in today's Times, he mentions Raul's experimentation with Brazillian jujitsu. Needless to say, that discipline is all about controlling center of gravity.
Perfect way to describe it in the American paradigm. Thanks for the translation :- )
The George Foreman example also appeals. A Mike Tyson would crouch and bounce up, hitting hard obviously, but Foreman sat heavily on his feet and used drive off the rear big toe, to throw bone-crushing punches in the 8th round as a 40-year-old.
What an awesome example THAT is, too. Is there such a thing as a FG kicker who is floating his weight at footstrike?
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Yes, pitchers can float their weight at footstrike... Matt Thornton, we all remember, rode high and light at release with the M's, and then the Sox got him to move more heavily. Interesting suggestion amigos have on Taijuan. Gotta go check it out.
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It IS interesting to see Smoak go through such a radical swing change, a Charlie Lau-type radical overhaul. Not encouraging that when these things occur, they seem to be usually happening outside the M's coaching staff.
You cannot take BJJ without a whale of a lot of training in "base," the South American interpretation of Keep Weight Underside. Which is why NCAA wrestlers adapt so well to BJJ (cf. Dan Severn).
If Rauuull has been training in BJJ then for sure he is sitting more heavily in his swing.
And now that you mention it Grizz, he DOES look that way, doesn't he?
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To what extent might this season be due to that?! It makes you start wondering to what extent you'd have a bit of a magic bullet here ... ;- )
Plus, we'd be rampant in any beanball war ...
Baker's article on Ibanez is fantastic. There is so much going on with Raul that you can tell he has to gloss over some things - the gluten free diet and the in-home hyperbaric chamber Raul made for himself at home, for instance. There is a lot on the "Tekbat" that he's using as a training tool, which is cool.
"The heavy black bat is designed to keep a hitter from rolling his wrists as he makes contact. It forces the back elbow to stay down and tight to the body, so a hitter can swing with his upper and lower halves, combining forces."
"Hansen said some of the team’s younger players are starting to use the bat in their workouts. Part of it, he figures, is just because they see Ibanez using it and tend to follow his every move."
You know this Doc, there will always be someone short term who breaks the fundamental rules but as a whole, such physics does not normally allow for new rules to be made. Great difference between tinkering and building strong fundamentals.