Just because you played high school, college, or professional baseball, that does not mean you understand good hitting mechanics even if you have good hitting mechanics. Here are examples of Hall of Famers and MLB greats who do not understand how they actually moved their body and their bats. They confuse feel with what is real. They may feel like they are moving their body and swinging the bat a certain way, but slow motion video shows us that the real movements and swing are very different. Unfortunately, they are giving people awful advice.

Having played baseball at a high level is certainly useful, but it in no way means you can teach hitting particularly if you do not study the high level swing.

Alex Rodriguez

Alex Rodriguez batted .295 with 696 home runs. You would think he understands how to swing a bat correctly. However, in this video, Rodriguez advises batters to swing straight down to the ball (1:36) and demonstrates a chop (2:21). He also makes the bogus claim that you swing down to get the ball up in the air and produce backspin (2:05). High level hitters do not swing down (chop at the ball). Moreover, swinging down is not the best way to produce backspin. Rodriguez also claims that batters use a “Ferris wheel” swing to get a greater launch angle, which results in a “long slow swing” (1:45). The problem is high level hitters who increase attack angle to increase launch angle do not dip the bat and get disconnected as Rodriguez assumes (2:20). They stay connected by increasing shoulder tilt to produce a steeper attack angle. That does not create a long slow swing because the bat is not casting away from the body as as he suggests.

George Brett

George Brett is in the MLB Hall of Fame with 3154 hits and a .305 batting average. Nonetheless, he does not seem to understand the position of the batter and bat at the point of contact. In Charley Lau’s The Art of Hitting .300, Brett demonstrates what he thinks is the ideal position at point of contact with the arms fully extended in a Power V and shoulders square or perpendicular to the bat (see the photos immediately below). However, that is not how batters actually hit the ball. At contact the hitter typically has his shoulders more square to the pitcher, the bat is in front of the body, and the arms are still unraveling to move to extension. See the color photo of Brett at the point of contact. What Brett feels he is doing and what he is really doing are two different things.

Albert Pujols

Albert Pujols had 703 home runs, 3384 hits, and batted .296 in 22 seasons. However, when explaining his approach to hitting the baseball on the MLB Network, he talks about taking the knob to the ball (see the video immediately below). When Pujols demonstrates taking the knob to the ball, he independently pushes the hands out and down (see the video from 0:50 to 1:20). Moreover, notice how the bat head stays above the hands to contact. “Knob to the ball” and “barrel above the ball (or hands)” are awful cues. MLB hitters do not swing a bat like that and neither does Pujols. Look the slow motion video of Pujols batting. Here we see the hands staying connected (not pushing independently towards the ball) and the bat head drops below the hands.

Don Mattingly

Don Mattingly played 14 seasons with the New York Yankees and had a career batting average of .307. In a “Hitting Tips with Don Mattingly” video posted on YouTube, he talks about and demonstrates the swing and follow through. At .30 in the video, Mattingly says “We want a level swing. Try to keep a little, slight downward path to the ball. At 1:00, he demonstrates this swing and does exactly what he said. He swings the bat in a downward path through the contract point. Mattingly is teaching a negative attack angle. This is truly awful advice for a batter. In fact, the opposite is true. A positive attack angle maximizes contact and power. Needless to say, Mattingly was a fantastic batter. That’s why he actually swung the bat with a positive attack angle.