Posted by: The Slav (cslavik@tampabay.rr.com) on Sat Sep 1 06:56:50 2001

I am a "lurker" who belives very much in what Jack is doing but one who has not been active in posting. Sorry, if this subject has been discussed before, but...I am curious as to what the standard should be for bat speed. I have SETPRO equipment for bat speed measurement. I also have Jack's tape and generally follow the "rotational" batpeed.com philosophy. The real question is how do you know if you are successful? What is the standard? I know that my son's bat speed is good for his age and weight from a local standard, but how does one know if they are doing good from an "absolute" perspective? Everyone: Please don't respond by saying, "Just do the best you can, and keep trying to improve". That is simply not good enough for as far as I am concerned. Jack, do you have any standards that you advocate? For example, what should a 10 (almost 11) year old kid who only weighs 75 pounds be doing in terms of bat speed? Do you consider this a relevant topic for this board? If not, then how do you measure progress? Certainly not just in terms of batting success in games since we face such a variety of pitchers.

I always looked at bat speed relative to the competition your facing and not age/ht/wt of the child. If he's facing 60mph heat, he needs to be around 60 mph or better bat spped. If he's slower in bat speed relative to the pitch speed, the trade offs he'll have to make in terms of decision making on the pitch will have an effect on his mechanics and this will flow to his ability to make contact/ hit for power, etc.Hope this helps.