Ryan Ludwick had a career year in 2008, with a .299 BA, a .966 OPS, and a well-deserved invite to the All Star Game. However, and as many people feared, he then seemed to regress to the mean in 2009 with a .265 BA and a .775 OPS. I'm not going to address to concept of regression to the mean, because that has been covered well in other places. Instead, I'm interested in answering two more fundamental questions about Ryan Ludwick in this analysis of his swing and hitting mechanics. First, why isn't Ryan Ludwick a better, more consistent hitter. Second, what's Ryan Ludwick likely to do in 2010?

Where's the Rub?

In general, there are two ways that hitters can fail. First, they can have a mechanical problem that makes their swing a bit too long or makes it hard for them to square up the ball consistently. Second, they can have a problem with their approach, which can lead them to swing at pitcher's pitches that keep them from using optimal mechanics.[1]

What a Good Swing Looks Like

Before I get into an analysis of the swing and hitting mechanics of Ryan Ludwick, let me remind you what a good swing looks like using The Mang (aka Albert Pujols) as an example. Some of the things to notice about Albert Pujols' swing are how quiet, short, and compact it is and how stable his head is. Also, the fact that he is making the Power L in both his back arm and back knee at the Point Of Contact (POC) is an indication of a very efficient swing that is driven by the large muscle of the core and not the much smaller muscles of the hands, wrists, and arms.

The problem is that Ryan Ludwick's swing is significantly different than Albert Pujols' swing.

Tension

When I look at Ryan Ludwick's pre-swing routine, and in particular when I compare and contrast it to that of Albert Pujols, the word "frenetic" is the one that pops into my head. Ryan Ludwick doesn't look comfortable at the plate. Rather he looks like he's going to crawl out of his skin.

Charley Lau Sr. talked a lot about the problem of tension in a swing, and I think Ryan Ludwick is an example of tension in action. While an active pre-swing routine can work for some players, if I were working with Ryan Ludwick the first thing I would do is try to quiet him up at the plate. At a minimum that might make him more consistent and less vulnerable to being quick pitched.

Too Much Tilt

No good hitter actually swings so that the bat is level to the ground at the Point Of Contact. Instead, they tilt over the plate such that, in most cases, the head of the bat will be slightly to significantly lower than their hands at the POC. However, Ryan Ludwick seems to take this to an extreme. As he gets into foot plant, he leans well over the plate and sticks his butt out. You will occasionally see this in good hitters if they accidentally chase a curveball, but Ryan Ludwick seems to do this in pretty much every swing.

If you compare the clip above of Ryan Ludwick with the first clip of Albert Pujols, you will see that while Albert's torso does tilt over the plate, Albert adjusts his tilt both sooner and less dramatically.[2]

Weight Transfer Issues

Ryan Ludwick's excessive tilt may also help to explain some of his weight transfer issues. While Albert Pujols' back foot gets up on the toe, if not completely up in the air, at the POC, Ryan Ludwick's back leg and back foot behave quite differently. That is an indication that his hip rotation is at least different than Albert Pujols' and that it may be less efficient.[3]

Overly Aggressive or Poor Eye?

Two non-mechanical things that can cause the kind of excessive tilt that you see in Ryan Ludwick's swing include being overly aggressive and having a poor eye.[4] Being too aggressive can lead you to chase pitcher's pitches, especially ones that are low down in the strike zone.[5] Chasing low pitches can also be caused by not being good at reading the pitch out of the pitcher's hand or starting the swing too soon and not having enough time to read the pitch.

A Longer Swing

Starting the swing too soon can be the result of trying to work around a problem like bat drag, and I do see some sequencing and timing issues in Ryan Ludwick's swing. In the clip below, watch how Ryan Ludwick's hands get behind his back elbow as he starts his swing.

You do not see that in the swing of Albert Pujols.

While in the case of Ryan Ludwick this doesn't create a classic problem with bat drag, it can lengthen one's swing just a bit, which can force you to start your swing sooner. That in turn will give you less time to read the pitch and will make you more vulnerable to being fooled.

Connection Issues

Another thing that is related to the topic of a longer swing is that I can't find any clips of Ryan Ludwick where he's in the classic position at the POC, as demonstrated by the picture of Albert Pujols below.

In every clip I have of Ryan Ludwick, at the Point Of Contact he is tilted way over the plate, his back elbow is too far away from his back hip, and he is much closer to extending and making the Power V at the POC than is Albert Pujols.

Too Much Head Movement

While many hitting coaches say that you should watch the bat hit the ball, and while you can sometimes find pictures of good hitters seemingly doing just that, the truth is that it's impossible to see the bat hit the ball. It all happens too fast. What good hitters actually do is they watch the ball as far as they can without moving their heads too much.

The clip above shows what Albert Pujols. Notice how stable his head is. He watches the ball with his eyes, but doesn't move his head to try to track the ball.

If you compare what Pujols does to what Ryan Ludwick does, you will see that Ludwick tries to watch the ball hit the bat. That creates far more head movement than you see in Albert Pujols' swing. All of that extra head movement could very easily explain why Ryan Ludwick has a harder time squaring up the ball.[6]

Na'huatl Huidu

So if I ran the zoo, and could get Ryan Ludwick to listen to me, what would I do? First, I would quiet up his pre-swing routine, if only because acting calmer can make you feel calmer. That might also have the side effect of making it harder for pitchers to quick pitch him and use his long pre-swing against him. Second, I would have him re-evaluate his approach and make sure that, instead of being aggressive and chasing every piece of garbage the pitcher threw his way (and in particular down in the strike zone), I would have him focus on waiting for the pitcher to make a mistake up and down the middle of the plate. Third, I would have Ryan Ludwick stop trying to watch the bat hit the ball and instead focus on reducing his head movement. I wouldn't try to fix anything else in Ryan Ludwick's swing until I made those three changes, because fixing those three things might fix the other problems in his swing.

Notes

[1] Part of Chris Duncan's problems, at least in 2009, seemed to be either his eye or his approach and not just his physical problems. He seemed to chase every crappy, pitcher's pitch that was thrown to him. I don't know if that was because he couldn't read the pitch or didn't care what it was, but it certainly hurt him.

[2] There's some question about what is cause and what is effect here. It could be that Ryan Ludwick habitually chases pitches that are low and away and that require him to tilt to go get them.

[3] If you watch Ryan Ludwick's feet, you can see some pretty significant differences in both his front and back feet compared to Albert Pujols. That suggests that he is moving and rotating differently.

[4] The really crafty pitchers, like Jamie Moyer and Greg Maddux, are experts at using a hitter's ego against them. I don't think that's Ryan Ludwick's problem, because there are so many obvious mechanical issues with his swing, but that's something to keep in mind.

[5] While I didn't have a strong opinion on Hal McRae, it always bothered me that one of McRae's keywords seemed to be "aggressiveness." The problem is that being overly aggressive can lead a hitter to chase the pitches the pitcher wants him to, and that keep him from being able to swing with his optimal mechanics, rather than waiting for a mistake.

[6] You could argue that some of Ryan Ludwick's excessive tilt and body movement could be related to trying to watch the bat hit the ball, and by quieting up his head you could quiet up his entire body.

As you may know, one of my pet peeves is how little the commentators on TV and the radio, at both the local and national levels, seem to know about what a good baseball swing looks like. They spend most to all of their time talking about false notions and outright myths, like extension at the point of contact, that seem important but are actually the effect of a good swing rather than the cause of a good swing.[1] As a result, they leave kids and their parents with a false sense of what the best hitters actually do when they swing the bat. That ends up hurting, rather than improving, kids' swings...

PLEASE NOTE: A large number of people have found this post to be valuable. As a result, and in order to make this post easier to maintain over time and in just one place, I have moved it to my web site...

- Albert Pujols Swing Analysis