Balance in Creating an Offense and Developing the Swing
This article was written in 2019 but was never published. I was still coaching at Hesston College and many of my articles were thoughts or reflections on the quality of my coaching. My thoughts on some of these subjects could be different or opposite, but I think it is still good to record this type of thinking to see how far I have come or where my thinking has changed.
I believe there are two main foundational pieces to coaching hitters in a team setting.
- Create an offense
- Develop the hitter
If you are a hitting instructor only one of the two pertain to you. I think this is where we see a lot of debates among coaches and instructors. What is more important? A coach of a team can easily argue the need to create an offense that scores run. Runs win games. While an instructor can easily argue, developing the individual hitter is most important.
This past year I realized how much these two are equally important. Before this fall I thought that by developing better swings the “creating offense” would play itself out. I found out quickly that at this level, it doesn’t. In November of 2018, C.J Gillman, asked on Twitter “What is the single best stat (or small group of stats) to judge a team’s offense by?” I was intrigued by this question. As I started to sift through what the MLB looks at and compare it to what I have deemed “important,” there was no clear answer on what the best group of stats was to judge a hitter’s offensive contribution to a team. I decided to create an offensive breakdown that would help me determine how effective each individual is within the team offense. Last year, it was four categories and this year I added one extra. These categories are wOBA, OBP, SB/CS, K/BB, and QAB. Below you will see how we define each category.
I understand there are so many other metrics that coaches can use to determine the value of their hitters to their team. I want to make sure I can keep it as simple as I can for my team.
In the diagram below you will see how the offensive breakdown fits into the team structure.
This diagram can be overwhelming and the first question you might have would be “Why make this so complicated? just go play baseball.” Well, what I am doing is giving our hitters structure and context. With all the information (good and bad) that is accessible now, I need to make sure our players know what we are trying to accomplish here at Hesston with each swing in practice and in-game. Our practices are not just a couple of stations and three rounds of six for BP. We have dedicated hitting practices that are 10 stations and two to three hours long. Our hitters need to know where I draw the line between developing a swing and competing because every drill and every practice has its purpose. To make it a little less complicated for our hitters this is how I break it down in one sentence.
Our team identity has a specific mentality that we want all of our players to have, or learn once they get here. The team's in-game goals will help put an achievable goal in front of the players. It allows for the team to move together in one direction. Understanding the offensive breakdown lets the players know the different ways they can produce and succeed in our program. And swing development never stops. Our hitters always need to be working on improving and adapting their swing.
I presented this in our first hitter’s meeting the second year at Hesston. In the fall, the execution of our hitting plans, development, and team mentality in the batter’s box was 100 times better than our previous year.
