KISS

             White Sox minor-league first baseman Andrew Vaughn, baseball’s #16 prospect according to MLB.com, is projected to take over from Jose Abreu in the not-too-distant future.  “Vaughn” and “future” aren’t words that necessarily belong in the same sentence.  “Old school” would be a better fit.

 

Vaughn was the third player taken in the 2019 draft last June.  The former UC Berkeley star told the Sun-Times yesterday, “I try to stay away from all the analytics because it will get into my head.  So I go out there with what feels good in the cage and bring it to the game.  See it and hit it.”  Vaughn says he doesn’t think about launch angle because then “you start doing weird stuff.  You see guys swinging PVC pipes, doing weird stuff with their swings, and that’s just not me.”  Or my daughter.

 

Clare went through her own PVC experience with a travel coach, who once took a bunch of different-sized wiffle balls and threw them on a cement floor; the idea was to hit as many balls as she could as they bounced merrily along.  After that came talk about elbows and hips.  It made me want to cover my daughter’s ears.

 

Like Vaughn, I’m a firm believer of see ball/hit ball, as long as you emphasize really seeing the ball.  Clare’s weakness in baseball was the slider away.  I yelled, screamed and shouted at her whenever she went fishing.  If hitters don’t know the strike zone, they don’t know (literally) the first thing about hitting.  Wiffle balls and PVC just get in the way.

 

As she grew older, my daughter picked up the lingo batting coaches are so fond of.  Ask her—not me—about hip rotation, and she’ll have an opinion.  But if the day ever comes for Clare to teach hitting, I can only hope she starts off by keeping it simple, like Andrew Vaughn says and her father taught her.