You might be surprised to know I found a video of Dee Gordon hitting a homerun. It’s true! Dee is certainly not known for his ability to drive the baseball – he’s a great prototype of the left handed speedster. It’s a player type that’s only going to be more prevalent in baseball for years to come. Let’s examine one of Dee’s finer moments in 2013. (images & video via MLB.com)
Pre-pitch:
I’ve talked about it many times before, but it’s the tendency of most hitters to begin the load into the hitting position too late into a pitcher’s delivery. A good rule of thumb is to begin your move towards the pitcher (stride) as the pitcher is moving towards home plate. Here you see Dee’s weight is still over his back leg, front heel off of the ground, while the pitcher is clearly into his stride to home. This reduces the time he has between being in the hitting position and having to make contact with the ball. This reduces your ability to recognize the pitch, determine the location, and put the barrel on the baseball. It is a common fault of hitters trying to generate more power.
Hitting Position:
Dee gets into a pretty good hitting position – weight distributed evenly on the inside of each leg, hands back, with both eyes clearly forward on the baseball.
That being said, he had a few interesting quirks. Dee’s weight is definitely not over the balls of his feet – if anything, you can see his front foot has an almost heel-only strike, and his front toes are almost off the ground well before his swing even starts.
Dee’s back elbow is also “up”, which means it must relax and come back down before he can get his hands through the hitting zone properly. This does not help a hitter like Dee have a quick, short swing.
Contact:
On this swing, Dee catches the ball well out in front of the plate & hits it squarely. That combo is enough to lift it over the right center field wall for a homerun.
Some positives in Dee’s contact position include his eyes (down), his bottom hand (stayed palm-up, without rolling over), and his front side (firm with a slight over rotation).
If there was anything to criticize, it would be everything from his mid-line (head) and back. While his weight does get up off of his back foot, it doesn’t entirely do so because his hips are still considerably restricted for a pitch that was pulled. Notice how is back hip, knee and toe are more of a ‘banana’ shape instead of a more vertical “L”. This is indicative of a hitter that hasn’t fully trasitioned their lower half into the swing, which costs them power, bat speed, and heightens the chances of inconsistent contact.
Finish:
Here we see some evidence as to why Dee tends to finish with more weight on his front heel – it helps set him up for an extremely fast transition into his sprint down the line to first base. His front foot rolls right into place to take off, instead of having to reset his feet into a sprinters stance like a more ‘fundamental’ finish might require.
Notice how bent over Dee’s upper body is over home plate. He’s definitely not “finishing tall”. This is another symptom of under-rotation of the lower half in the swing, and further contributes to a loss of power and consistent barrel contact.
Biggest Strength:
Dee is certainly not trying to do too much with his swing, which suits his contact-first gameplan at the plate. His head is down, weight stays balanced from hitting position through contact, and he maximizes his speed by transitioning from swing to sprint in an instant.
Biggest Issues:
He has a bunch of common flaws you see in hitters who do not generate the bat speed they are capable of: late load, back elbow up, under-rotation, collapsing upper half at finish. Like many of us, Dee is never going to be a power hitter, but fixing some of these common issues could dramatically improve the authority with which he hits the ball.
