If a player can hit well from both sides of the plate, will it really be valuable when being recruited?

quote:

Originally posted by rhbaseball:
If a player can hit well from both sides of the plate, will it really be valuable when being recruited?

IMO, yes!

rh:

In most cases, yes, but it really depends on how good the switchhitter is from each side. I have seen kids go from being a great hitter one way to just average both ways. But, I do know this, you do not want to be the right-handed hitter in a platoon situation in college baseball. Switch-hitting takes care of that.

My son is a switchhitter and we always believed it was a huge benefit. He is a 400+ hitter and has had homeruns from both sides. But his natural side is from the right and has more physical power which seems to be the biggest asset scouts look for in a player. We questioned whether he should go back to just hitting from the right but we left it up to him to decide. As a senior this year, he is not seeing many fast balls so he must use his own power to get the ball out and that is easier from the right side. I'd love to hear some coaches and scouts opinions on this topic.

Mom:

Keep in mind that as a switch-hitter, you never face a curve ball that breaks away from you, which probably is the biggest advantage of all as a switch hitter.

Better to be excellent from one side than average from both---my guy was a righty with blazing footspeed and they experimented for a short period with him as a switch-hitter in HS ---he stayed righty and hit .568 in his senior year

quote:

Originally posted by jemaz:
Mom:

Keep in mind that as a switch-hitter, you never face a curve ball that breaks away from you, which probably is the biggest advantage of all as a switch hitter.

Thats great stuff Jemaz!!!!

TRHIT:
You have a PM

quote:

Originally posted by rhbaseball:
If a player can hit well from both sides of the plate, will it really be valuable when being recruited?

Name 10, 15, 20 D1 programs and then go look at their roster and see how many switch hitters there are.

Beezer,

I did look up the rosters and they ranged on average from 0-3 switch hitters. Does that mean that many players gave it up and stuck to one side of the plate or that it is something that is difficult to do? I can see both sides of that and maybe there isn't a right answer. It seems like your natural side has more power but if you can hit well from both sides, do scouts deem that as an asset or would they rather see your power from your natural side more often?

Looking at rosters there seems to be a fair amount of left handed hitters (right handed throwers).

Which I'm guessing says a fair amount were at sometime switch hitters but ended up going lefty.

This is just my opinion, I would be more inclinded to work with a natural left handed hitter wanting to switch hit than a natural right handed hitter.

Most pitchers are right handed, so a natural right handed hitter would spend more time "switching" whereas a left handed hitter would spend more time in his comfort zone hitting from the left side of the plate against right handed pitching.

There are exceptions to every rule, but that is usually my retort when a high school kid asks me about switch hitting. AS TRhit said, better to do 1 thing great than 2 things average.

Of course it is an asset, but only if it is done above average from both sides of the plate. That being said I would rather have a right-handed hitter that understood how to hit the ball to all fields than a switch hitter that could only pull the baseball.

I can only speak from our experience, but our oldest son is a lefty who hit exclusively from the right side through high school. He started switch hitting the summer before college because his college coach thought it would improve his draft status down the road. He's been a switch hitter ever since.

We've always heard that its been an advantage. To my knowledge, no one in pro baseball has ever suggested he drop it...even during slumps.

quote:

Originally posted by Novice Dad:
Looking at rosters there seems to be a fair amount of left handed hitters (right handed throwers).

Novice / NRPMom - A while back there was a debate about this. As many have answered here (again) the conventional thought then was, YES, SH are valuable. So I scoured quite a list of rosters to find out for myself just how valuable they are. I think the conclusion I made was that yes, they (SH) do exist on the roster but not very many. More likely as Novice suggested they've switched over and are "Hit left, throw right" players. But even those are limited to a couple per team.

So I'm pretty much of the mindset that if my son is going to make it to Div 1 (his goal) he's better served to be an exceptional hitter from one side than an above average hitter from both.

Since I've seen the emphasis put on power hitting, I told my son he might want to consider going back to his strong or power side of the ball, right side hitting only. His answer was he likes the way the ball comes in on the left side with a right handed pitcher. Being a senior he now sees mainly junk so he needs to use more physical power to put the ball out so that is what he is working on. I'm guessing his college coach will tell him if he wants him to switch, other wise he'll leave it as is.

quote:

Originally posted by NRPMom:
I'm guessing his college coach will tell him if he wants him to switch, other wise he'll leave it as is.

Good way to look at it.

My son threw left-handed and started batting left-handed. However, when he was about 8 years old, he decided he wanted to switch-hit. Frankly, I tried to discourage him, saying nobody who starts off hitting from the left switch-hits, because you're already where most everyone wants to be: closer to first base and facing way more right-handed pitchers whose curve-ball will always start off outside and breaks into the zone (doesn't "break" right across your elbow, the cause of a lot of "knee-buckling").

He did it anyway and, essentially, taught himself by watching his left swing in a full-size mirror, then trying to exactly duplicate it from the right. By the time he was 10 years old, he was switch-hitting in every game. He's quite accomplished at it and his swings are virtually identical. However, as his hitting instructor told him, hitting is hard and switch-hitting is twice as hard...he has to do twice the work (balls off the tee, etc.) as one who bats only from one side.

However, I learned something interesting from him the other day. He was struggling with an aspect of his swing (felt he was "opening-up" too early) from the left-side, but said he'd cure it by taking extra swings from the right side. He said he can sort of "re-learn" his correct swing by using the side where the problem hadn't yet developed...apparently, he sort of takes mental notes of where his body/hands/bat are (or, should be) thoughout the swing on the non-problem side and re-applies it to the problem side. He said this has worked for him many times.