Inspired by a recent conversation, I’d like to cover “the take” and why I think that, while they’re important and can tell us a lot about a hitters process, they shouldn’t be an active focus for the hitter. First things first, this is what I’m referring to in terms of a take:
Credit to Bobby Tewksbary’s Youtube channel for the video.
So in the video above, we see Donaldson prep, go through all of his normal swing characteristics, and then shut it down at the last second when he decides not to swing. As a result, the barrel dips down below him, as it would if he were going to take a hack.
Cool. Good take.
Here’s another. From Bonds’ legendary at bat against Gagne:
Again, you can see there is a CLEAR intention to swing here, until he decides to shut it down due to location of the pitch.
Cool. Another good take.
So what’s the problem? Forcing takes.
With all the conversation about “process” and “yes, yes, yes, no” (which I love btw), I feel like we’ve taken it a tad too far. We now have hitters demonstrating “takes” on pitches that end up 6 feet over their head (slight exaggeration). First of all, if you ever actively thought about swinging at that pitch, you should probably play a different sport, and second of all, having to start the “go” portion of your swing (when the hands actually start moving forward) early, is probably not a good thing. Yes we want to be in YES mode, but that doesn’t mean we have to act like we were just about to swing at every pitch with a dramatic take.
Take a look at this one. Correa had two strikes here:
How far into his swing process did Correa get here? There’s a slight “pump” of the hands, but you can see the pitch was never truly enticing to him, so there’s a very “quiet” take.
The problem I see with a lot of guys trying to “swing like Donaldson” is they dump the barrel back behind them on every non swing just to make it look like they have a good swing process. They are more worried about what their take will look like than they are about whether they saw the pitch well and whether they were ever actually considering swinging at it.
So my point is this: you CAN learn a ton from a hitters take. But, ONLY if it’s a true take and the hitter ACTUALLY decided to shut it down last second because the pitch was enticing up until that point.
Hitters should be able to feel their takes, not force their takes. It’s an after the fact thing, not an in-the-moment thing.
A little bit shorter than normal today, but that’s all I got. Hope it helped!
Questions or comments on the article? Interested in remote training with DAC? I can be reached via email at brady@dacbaseball.com.