I swing standard-length 34" softball bats. I’ve always hit the ball well. However, eye surgery a couple years back left me with a depth perception issue. While I still do well, I’ve become a bit inconsistent at times. So, during a tournament last weekend I experimented with choking up a bit (1") figuring I’d gain a little more bat control. Now, about 30 “at bats” later, I seem to be doing a bit better in terms of hitting the ball hard.
My question relates to distance. In theory, choking up will shorten the distance I will hit the ball. Now, I really don’t care as long as my batting average stays high, but I’m wondering if a 1" choke will really make that much difference in the distance I hit fly balls/line drives.
It’s hard to say for sure without knowing more about your hitting style, approach, strength and whatnot.
It does make a difference. The likelihood, without knowing you or the level of softball you’re playing, is that the difference is not substantial and won’t have a huge impact on your numbers.
If you find bat control an issue you may wish to go to a lighter bat but stay at the 34" length.
Or go with a shorter bat. The closer your hands get to the ball the better chance of making contact. However, you give up the leverage the bat gives you in reversing the direction of the ball and driving it a long distance.
Take this to its extreme. If you had no bat and hit the ball with your hand you would probably make direct contact every time but you wouldn’t get the ball past the pitcher’s mound. The bat is a tool that makes the action of the hands much more efficient.
This is why ball players get crazy over the bat that they use. You can’t have too heavy or too light of a bat. You can’t have too long of a bat or too short of a bat. The handle has to fit your hands. What works for one player probably will not be the best for another. Of course, you have to decide what kind of a hitter you are. Do you hit home runs or do you scrap out singles?
My experience with softball is that most men are idiots. They want to see how far they can drive the ball. (It’s a softball numbnuts, it’s not going to go 500 feet. Your’e not Mickey Mantle.) The way to win is just to have the lineup keep hitting singles. When the outfield starts playing too far in have your strong guys hit a triple up the gap. Seems to work every time.
Just a quick mention that Barry Bonds was well known to choke up on the bat and he didn’t seem to have too many problems hitting the ball really far. Some other stuff helped too, sure, but he hit home runs before his head doubled in size too.
"Do you hit home runs or do you scrap out singles? "
While I have the strength/bat speed to hit more home runs, I’m tend to hit line drives most often. Some tell me to angle my swing upwards a bit to hit more HRs, but I’m hesitant to change what most see as a good thing.
Deliberately angling your swing upwards in an excellent way to pop up to the shortstop a lot more often and probably add no home runs at all.
Again, without seeing your swing I can’t comment specifically, but
A) Choking up a little, or using a lighter (or differently balanced) bat, doesn’t make that much of a difference unless you are playing at a high level.
B) In terms of improving your swing, there are probably 10 improvements you could make that don’t require a dramatic change like using a pronounced uppercut.
Most amateur ballplayers waste a lot of their strength with poor swing mechanics, and then fret and worry about buying a $300 bat or using this bat or that bat to add five feet of distance to their fly balls. (I’m not saying this is you, just making a general point.) You’re better off talking to a certified baseball coach for an hour; he’ll find ways for you to put more force into the ball, and you’ll be hitting better with the worst team bat than you were with a primo $350 Miken Freak.
Try aiming for the top of the ball. I know that sounds like you’ll hit the top and drive the ball into the dirt. You won’t. You’ll still hit center mass, but you’ll be swinging upward juuuuust slightly. If you want a grounder to bring the run in, aim for the bottom of the ball.
I play Senior (55+) softball. A good seven day period will get me in 5 games, although a tournament last weekend kicked it up to 12. W/regard to the level, it’s all over the map. On one hand, there is a recreational league and on the other hand the aforementioned tournament was close to suicidal playing third base.
We recently started a wood bat league. Great fun and you really have to become a more disciplined hitter as Maple isn’t as forgiving as composite.
I really didn’t want to take it that far but, since you did, I’ll offer the anecdote:
Beyond the age of being a great athlete I played for years on co-ed company softball teams. The captain would stack the lineup with the big hitting men in the first four or five batting positions. Some of them would get a hit but too often it was a long fly out. Numerous times you would get through to the bottom of the lineup and there would be runners on the bases in scoring position. The team is down by one or two runs. So the gorillas at the top of the lineup would come to bat. Did they go for the single to drive in the run, advance the base-runners and keep the inning alive? Of course not, they tried to drive the ball over the fence which resulted in a long fly ball out that ended the inning. I’m shaking my head in frustration.
I say to one of the women on the bench, “Men are idiots when it comes to playing this game.” She just simply agrees. Later on we enjoy the post game beers.
It’s entirely possible that choking up changes your balance and thereby your swing in a way that ends up giving you much more power. Ideally, you could try to consciously bring those better swing habits back into your non-choked-up swing, but at the amateur level that’s probably a hell of a lot of work, probably requiring professional help. Probably best to just keep choking up an inch and keep knocking back those easy singles and occasional doubles.
As to men who swing for the fences-- this is also my experience. I can’t tell you how many runners I’ve coached to wait for the pop fly to be caught before running, even before the batter came up to bat, simply because I knew who would swing for the fences. Me, I tried to drive the ball right between first and second base, and I had a rather high on-base percentage most of the time. Personally, the sort of people who I try to recruit for softball teams are girls who played softball in high school. They play damn sensibly, hit nice singles, and they always catch easy pop flies.
In my league the players (all men) hit within their abilities. You never see guys desperately trying to drill home runs if they aren’t capable of it. So, no, men aren’t idiots, but some know more about baseball than others.
f you’re playing in a pickup league with inexperienced ballplayers, sure, you’ll get people hitting fly balls when they should be hitting line drives. Of course, you’ll also see fielders not backing each other up, not hitting the cutoff man, players committing any number of baserunning crimes, and quite often not fully understanding all the rules. There’s a difference betwene men being idiots and men just not being very good ballplayers.
Baseball is a hard sport to master, and it’s natural for someone without a lot of experience or coaching to try to overpower the game with strength, just as it is natural for a rookie golfer to overswing or for a new bowler to try nothing more complex than heaving the ball as hard as possible. The fact that those techniques don’t work is not immediately apparent to the newbie.
What about “swing hard in case you hit it?” As for choking up in slow pitch softball, a lot of guys even wrap their pinky around the knob of the bat to get a little extra length and power. The lost power from choking up an inch is not going to be significant if you’re not trying to hit HRs anyway.
To the OP, yes it will impact your ability to drive the ball for distance. It’s a physics problem, really. And if all other factors remain the same, you have changed the factors of the bat. But as others have said, much depends on your current swinging style. If you currently swing and hit for line drives, you will continue to do so, perhaps with just a little less power.
If you have been swinging for the fences with an uppercut, instead of over the fence, you may find yourself hitting long fly outs.
You have shortened your fulcrum (the bat), so even if you have increased your bat speed through the strike zone, unless you’ve changed your stance in the box, odds are you are swinging at different pitches. These pitches are closer to you, since you can’t reach the pitches you used to swing at with the shorter bat.
I’m sure there is someone who can explain the physics better than me, but that’s about it in a nutshell. Barry Bonds not withstanding, most players who choke up on a bat and don’t change the weight of the barrel of the bat, or anything else about their batting style, will not become power hitters. The speed of the bat gained through the strike zone will not compensate for the loss of the leverage of the bat.