Chipper Jones on MLB Network

all right walk over here what because I'm being honest with you al I'm watching this guy touched my career on such a different level he taught me how to prepare for a big league game to face guys such as yourself nobody loved being in a cage more than chipper and I think for me what I want to get into is in today's game you're getting just bombarded with numbers launch angles and exit velocities and you hear guys like Chris Bryant Josh Donaldson Daniel Murphy they hashtag no ground balls right that's their philosophy they want to hit the bottom half of the ball elevate everything they don't care about topspin and anything right I think my my question I think the people at home would want to know what were your keys I mean I know him but what were your keys when you were standing in the on-deck circle my keys well you know we're talking about things that I try to work on the most important thing that I always tried to do was to keep my eyes as still as possible is the single hardest thing in life to do this hits something coming at you you know 95 miles an hour round ball round by his square alright so if your head is moving all right and and I had some movement in my swing I was you know we did the toe top okay but you'll see in my transfer of the head does not move so okay guy quick pitches I know you had trouble with the toe top from time to time okay abbreviate the toe tap all right so the head doesn't move the highest don't move and you're able to to try and square it up now we have a tee right here which brings back some great memories for me because this was where I lived all right and I would try you know we got those batting tails under there nothing into the top nothing in now everything's in tune right I saw I saw stat last night on TV that Chris Bryant had the highest launch angle it was like 19 and reasonably how do you even know that [Laughter] he hit the highest homers I mean is that is that what you're saying he hit the balls that like went the highest I don't know what that means your job is my job when I was hitting is I wanted to create backspin all right so how do I do that I hit down on the ball and I hit line drives right into the to the back of the cage if I have any kind of hook or topspin the balls not gonna it's not going to carry the way I want it to so I I work on coming down on the baseball and that creates backspin that gives you your right launch angle and guys say today they're not trying to create backspin they say backspin gets caught up in some of these fields they want to just hit it square with it it's it's unbelievable but I think for me like you talked about having a still head was were you trying to stay inside the baseball were you the same from the left side and the right side or did you do two different things my my approach to hitting was my my strength was getting extended okay so if say I was faced an owl you like to throw the the cutter in on me right-handed okay so I would take the play I would move off the play to get over there okay so if this is the plate here's where I would normally stand if you were gonna you were great on the glove side okay you could you could dominate the glove side but your arm side you were more inconsistent alright so I would move off the plate and make the inside corner at the middle of the plate and anything I saw inside I would spit on all right and if he wanted to throw me the two seamer the four seamer out there take it I got to tip my cap okay I can't I can't cover both because he was he was too good he wasn't I had I had an approach like that similar with a lot of guys Andy Pettit was the same way I would I would I would approach ow and Andy the same way lefties you know or when I was hitting left-handed I wanted the ball out over the plate okay so I would wait on if I was facing brownie that day I would give him the cutter in anything inside I would give but out there that was my is that sitting on pitches guessing I hear about guys that they don't want to sit up he was a video did you sit on a pitch I was loaded cutters 100% 100% if the guys out pitch was his changeup at crunch time I would be sitting all over the team I got to tell a story real quick we're in Montreal I just get a cup of coffee in 98 3 2 is first at-bat off mic Thurman I'll never forget a 3-2 changeup he taps it back to the pitcher he runs down a first base he comes in he sits next to me I'm just excited to be sitting next to Chipper Jones and he said hey kid he throws me that pitch again it's going D I'm going deep right your third a B to win the game two men on he threw him to changeup again dead center because I mean if you have success against a young hitter all right yeah he's got you gotta prove it you gotta prove you gotta prove to these guys that you can make an adjustment now you're gonna hit it so if the guy gets me out with a changeup early in the game why am I not gonna be sitting on that at crunch time you know later on in a game and just I most guys this thing you know now is that different than pitchers are bringing their fevers and they're just gonna stand being a guest hitter as opposed to sitting on a pitch that's I feel like that's being disciplined it's not guessing it's sitting and waiting on a pitch and that discipline you know it's gonna really pay off really sites like that in ballplayer by Chipper Jones your books the market tomorrow a lot of court on amazon.com you

Channel: kwbaseball

Views: 16,423

Rating: 4.878788 out of 5

Keywords: hitting, mlb, mlbnetwork, launchangle

Id: f2UXVK_9qVg

Length: 6min 0sec (360 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 02 2018