When it comes to setting goals players should learn to not worry about numbers. A player should worry about things they can control. For example instead of setting a goal in high school of hitting .400 set the goal to control the strike zone and not take call third strikes or swing at pitches out of the zone. Instead of setting a goal to hit 10 HR’s, set a goal of jumping on fastballs early in the count instead of letting the pitcher get ahead and control your at bat. The reason numerical goals are a bad standard is as a hitter you can not control what happens after you hit the ball. How many times have you said “I am crushing the ball this past week, but it is right at people”. All of a sudden you are 0-12 and you feel horrible about yourself. If you realize those balls will fall as long as you keep your same approach and strive to reach the goal of controlling the zone and not swinging at balls out of the zone you will be OK. What normally happens when a player goes 0-12 even if they are hitting the ball hard is they make swing adjustments or they become impatient at the plate. This is really bad because you failed to realize the difference of 0-12 with 6 strikeouts and 0-12 with 8 line drives. The last thing a hitter should do is change anything about their swing in mid season until you are 100% sure that is the problem. Panic mode is not a good thing and when you get to it, you are sure to create worse problems for yourself and start to spiral out of control. Just relax, play your game, and things will come around and those balls will begin to fall.
Setting the proper goals is a very important part of the game, and remember before you push the eject button on your swing or stance make sure you are in serious trouble and not just a little jumpy because of the outcome. Remember this post when you are playing this year and if this happens to you come on back to calm yourself down a little. If you need further help just shoot me an email at samflamont@tumblr.com.
Other Goals to Set as a Hitter:
*Execute all of my sacrifice bunts, this will make you work on that skill and save you some of your very valuable average points and put your team in a better position to win games.
*Put the ball in play with runners on third and less then two out: Notice I did not say get a hit, because it is only important that the ball get in play in this situation. Pretty much any ball in play will score a run here. Focusing on this will add RBI to your total and you never know what happens when someone has to make a play. You can also apply this hit and runs.
*Put the ball in play with two strikes: Notice I didn’t say don’t take call third strikes, I avoided that because it is a negative statement and we always want our goals to be positive. Again by putting the ball in play with two strikes you make a fielder do his job and sometimes defenses players make mistakes, this may not help your Average but it does help your team and your on base percentage.
These are a good start, if you have some I missed let me know in the comment section.
