Swing Question....

seeing Quick Pitch this morning and watching Justin Pedroia go yard brought to my mind a mechanics question.

Pedroia appears to collapse his back side (a swing NO NO from all I have ever heard or read) but compensates for this by keep his hands on top of the ball. Is this the secret of his power from such a small frame? Is this in general a power move that a lot of MLB players use which allows them to stay behind the ball and let it travel? Mark Texeria seems to do the same thing but is of course much bigger and stronger.

Thanks in advance for the discussion...

 

Rotational Mechanics

This is what you see from most of the major leaguers who hit with power. However the term collapsing the bag leg is a negative term and is a bad thing if your are a "linear hitter". In the "rotational swing" the weight shift is stopped abruptly against a rigid front leg just before contact and the swing plane is to match the pitch plane, so to accomplish both one must have the proper tilt to the body at contact and you can't have that tilt if you don't have the proper bend in the back leg. Trust me when I say he isn't collapsing the back leg, it's rigid as well at contact.