by Chris O’Leary

Version Beta3 Updated 2014.02.19

Matt Carpenter A Swing of Beauty

Legal Stuff Except as noted, this document, and the words and pictures in it, are copyright © Chris O’Leary 2014. All rights reserved. This document may not be published, in whole or in part, to a web site, public or private, without the prior written permission of Chris O’Leary. Chris O’Leary is not affiliated or associated with Major League Baseball, this document is not endorsed by Major League Baseball, and all of the opinions expressed in this document are Chris O’Leary’s. If you happen to come across this flipbook on the Internet or via a friend and find it to be valuable, please understand that it isn’t something that I just give away for free. Instead, I charge $14.95 for it. This flipbook is the product of years of work and thousands of dollars of investment on my part. On average, I have to go to 10 games to get one really valuable clip. You can purchase a legal, licensed copy of this flipbook at… http://www.chrisoleary.com/buy/ My family and I thank you. Chris O’Leary February 2014

How to Use This Flipbook When I use this flipbook in front of an audience, you will notice that I am constantly rolling backwards and forwards through the slides, pointing out not just the positions and shapes but also the movements. If you want to get the maximum value out of this eBook, you should do the same; you should set this eBook up so that only one page occupies the screen and then page back and forth from page to page, watching the movements. The easiest way is to download this PDF to your computer and open it using Adobe Reader or some other application that can display PDFs one page at a time. In Acrobat select View > Read Mode or View > Page Display > Single Page View. You can then use the right and left – or up and down – arrows on the keyboard to go through the frames of each clip and get a sense of how each movement looks and works.

About This Flipbook This flipbook started out a year or so ago as a flipbook about Mickey Mantle, a hitter whose swing I have absolutely fallen in love with and that I am using as the model for my younger son’s swing. The problem is that it’s hard to find good clips of Mickey Mantle’s swing. As a result, I have spent the past year looking for contemporary hitters I could film whose swings are reminiscent of Mantle’s and that I could use as a proxy for Mantle’s swing when talking about hitting and working with my son. The swing of Matt Carpenter of the Cardinals caught my eye as representing a modern-day incarnation of Mickey Mantle’s swing. Yes, there are some differences – Carpenter doesn’t employ as energetic of a stride and he is more of a low-ball hitter while Mantle was more of a high-ball hitter – but the critical similarities are there.

In comparing their swings, you will see that, like Mickey Mantle, Matt Carpenter… • Exemplifies athletic posture. • Powers his swing, and adjusts, with his

entire body and not just his arms. • Rotates his hips and shoulders at least

90 degrees into the Point Of Contact. • Adjusts to the height of the pitch by

tilting over the plate, not by just dropping his hands.

• Turns the barrel with his entire body, not just his hands, wrists, and arms.

• Maintains the hinge angle between the barrel and his front arm until just a few frames before the Point Of Contact.

• Rather than trying to hit the ball at full extension, maintains connection into the Point Of Contact and then extends.

• Keeps his head relatively stable through the Point Of Contact.

Finally, pay particular attention to Matt Carpenter’s front arm and elbow. I don’t know what Matt Carpenter has been taught about hitting, but he starts out with the low front elbow that you see in the swings of hitters like David Freese who have been taught the whole, “You have to keep your front elbow down in order to keep from developing a loop in your swing and letting the barrel drops below the ball and your hands,” thing. However, if you watch Matt Carpenter’s front arm, you will see that, as he swings, his front arm and elbow rise up off of his chest. At the same time, the barrel drops below the ball and his hands as he gets the barrel on plane with and down to the ball. Obviously, if Matt Carpenter can be as successful as he is while doing this, then perhaps keeping the front elbow down throughout the swing isn’t as important as people say it is.

HR to RF Clip 1149

2013.06.23

The camera was in line with the front edge of the plate.

HR to RF Clip 1805

2013.07.10

HR to RF Clip 1334

2012.03.19

This camera was in line with the front edge of the plate.

The ball was hit so hard that it went out of the Braves’ spring training

stadium in Orlando, Florida. I’d estimate it went a

Mantle-esque 450 feet.

01

Posture: Contrast Matt Carpenter’s bent knee, crouched, athletic posture with the upright, locked-knee, un-athletic posture that you see in so many young hitters and some older ones (like Pete Kozma). What Matt Carpenter’s posture does is it makes his swing efficient; it lets him power his swing, and adjust, with his entire body and not just his arms.

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Striding Forward While Staying Back: Notice how Matt Carpenter strides forward while keeping the knob in place, if not moving slightly backwards. His head also only moves forward a few inches while his stride is roughly a foot.

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Toe Touch: Notice how Matt Carpenter leads with his front toe into foot plant. That enables him to make a timing adjustment if the pitch is off-speed. The knob of the bat hasn’t moved forward during his stride, and actually moved back an inch or slightly more, which is a small and subtle, but still significant, loading movement.

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Bat Wrap: Many people, if they were looking at a younger hitter, would label what you see on this page as “bat wrap.” However, the fact that Matt Carpenter does it suggests that bat wrap isn’t the problem that many people believe it is. I am especially sensitive to this topic because, in an effort to fix Andres Torres’ “problem” with bat wrap, the Giants robbed his lefty swing of much of its efficiency by inhibiting his load.

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(Back) Knee Before Knob: While Matt Carpenter’s back knee has started moving down and forward, priming the rotation of his hips, the knob of the bat is still staying in place and the barrel is still loaded and pointing at the catcher.

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Heel Plant: Rather than letting his hands leak forward, Matt Carpenter kept his hands back into heel plant. Only now is the knob starting to come around and forward. That helped him create Separation between his hips and his shoulders and increased the efficiency of his swing.

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Compactness: One of the reasons why Bat Wrap isn’t as bad as people think it is is because it helps a hitter maximize their compactness as they start to rotate. That, in turn, minimizes the hitter’s rotational inertia and maximizes the rate at which they can rotate. Notice how compact Matt Carpenter gets, and then stays, in the next 4 or 5 frames.

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Front Shoulder Opening: Instead of keeping his front shoulder closed and his shoulders in place during his swing, Matt Carpenter’s front shoulder is rotating open to deliver the barrel to the hitting zone.

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The Box: Notice how Matt Carpenter’s front arm, his shoulders, and the barrel all rotate in the same plane and at the same rate, meaning that Matt Carpenter sets and then turns what some people call “The Box” and that I call “The Parallelogram.” That also means that Matt Carpenter turns the barrel with his entire body, not just his hands or arms.

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Vertical V: Notice the overall similarity to Barry Bond’ swing at this moment. In particular, notice how tight Matt Carpenter’s back elbow gets and then stays as he rotates. Forming this V shape in his back arm helps ensure that he keeps his hands inside the ball. Also notice how, like Barry Bonds, Matt Carpenter’s back knee is rotating freely, enabling his hip rotation.

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Front Elbow Lifting: While Matt Carpenter starts off with his front elbow down, as he starts to rotate his front elbow comes up off of his chest as he adjusts to the height of the pitch and aligns his swing plane with the pitch plane.

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Holding the Hinge Angle: Matt Carpenter is still holding the Hinge Angle, the roughly 90 degree angle between his front forearm and the barrel of the bat. What intrigues me about Matt Carpenter’s swing is how well it matches up with the swing of Mickey Mantle at the same moment in time.

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Front Knee Extension: Notice how Matt Carpenter’s front knee is extending into the Point Of Contact, helping to finish the rotation of his hips and pulling his back heel off the ground as a result. It also stops the forward movement of his body, which helps to transfer energy from his body to the barrel.

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Chicken Wing: Tony Gwynn, among others, believes the front elbow must stay down in order to keep the bat head from dropping below the hands and the ball and creating a loop in the swing. However, Matt Carpenter exhibits a chicken wing and a loop in all 3 of these (home run) swings. That is because chicken winging and looping the barrel are how the best hitters get and then keep the bat on plane with the pitch.

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Point Of Contact: While Matt Carpenter had to extend slightly to adjust to the speed of the pitch, his back arm is still bent roughly 90 degrees, indicating that he maintained Connection into the Point Of Contact. The barrel is also in line with his front forearm, which means that the barrel is rapidly whipping around his hands. Matt Carpenter’s head moved only slightly and he isn’t looking directly down as some people teach.

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Full Extension: Matt Carpenter is at full extension, but 3 or 4 frames after the Point Of Contact, not at the Point Of Contact. That is because extension is the effect of a good swing and not the cause of a good swing. If Matt Carpenter were to try to hit every pitch at full extension, he would lose his ability to adjust to off-speed pitches, at a minimum.

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The Telltale Arc: The biggest problem with many of the swing planes that you see hitting instructors demonstrate is that they aren’t physically possible. For instance, it’s not possible to pull off a V or check-shaped swing plane while swinging a 30+ ounce bat (without hurting your wrists). Instead, a high-level swing plane is disc-shaped, centered around the spine and the hands. Good hitters tilt over the plate to align this disc with the path of the pitch for the maximum amount of time.

The Kink in the Hand Path: Many people teach hitters to throw their hands at the ball, with the throw going through the Point Of Contact. However, if you look at Matt Carpenter’s hand path, you will see something significantly different. Right before the Point Of Contact (the green dot), his hands stop going forward. That produces a kink in the hand path and causes the barrel to whip around the hands.

Barry Bonds: While Barry Bonds’ career and legacy are obviously tainted by the steroid allegations, the fact is that Barry Bonds had a tremendous swing. That was why he was so good before (and after) the steroids put him over the top. Two critical things that Barry Bonds did, and that Matt Carpenter also does, was powering his swing with his hips and, just as importantly, keeping from bleeding off that power by staying compact as he rotated. If you compare this frequently-used, and telling picture of Barry Bonds with a frame of Matt Carpenter, you can see that they are moving similarly.

Mickey Mantle: The picture above of Mickey Mantle is one of my absolute favorites because it shows many of the things a hitter must do in order to hit the ball well. Notice how Mantle holds the hinge angle for an extended amount of time and tilts over the plate to align his swing plane with the plane of the pitch. As you can see, Matt Carpenter does quite a good job of doing what Mickey Mantle does.

Where to go From Here This is just one of my flipbooks and it contains excerpts from a few of the many flipbooks and clips that I have in my library. Some of those flipbooks are available for sale individually and all of them are available to those who purchase one or more of my hitting bundles. To see what hitting and other products are available, including drills that will help you develop the movements that you see in this flipbook, go to… http://www.chrisoleary.com/buy/ For more information about the concepts and ideas discussed in this eBook, you can contact me via…

E-mail: thepainguy@gmail.com Phone: 314.494.1324.

More of my writings can be found on my free, public web site…

www.chrisoleary.com