Climbing The Power-Hitter's Ladder

Sporting News, The, August 16, 1999 by Bob McCullough

Mark McGwire started his career on the top rung, but it's usually a three-step progression for the game's

BIG BOPPERS

For Derek Jeter, the road to power started over the winter, when he began to focus on driving the ball to the gaps after being stuck on 19 home runs for the final 2 1/2 weeks of the 1998 season.

For Ken Griffey Jr., it was a vote of confidence that helped trigger his rise from 20 to 40 homers a year, allowing him to relax and return to his normal approach of trying to hit the ball off the pitcher's head. And for Sammy Sosa, the leap into Mark McGwire country came with a subtle adjustment in his hand position at the plate. which allowed him to stay back on the breaking ball and consistently work deeper into the count.

Trying to hit homers may be antithetical to the Zen of power hitting, but there is a sort of learning curve that most power hitters go through while making the breakthrough to bona fide sluggers. As hitters reach the big leagues, they slowly evolve from "accidentally" hitting homers to finding out which pitches they can consistently drive out of the park. And though there are players who pull a McGwire and leap to the top rung as rookies and remain there for most of their careers. most big-time home run hitters generally go through three stages in climbing the power ladder: the entry-level plateau (10 to 20 a year), the middle tier (20 to 35) and the upper echelon (35 and beyond, attained by Juan Gonzalez, Griffey. Sosa and McGwire).

It's getting to be a crowded climb. Last season's Year of the Home Run centered around the riveting race to 70, but the pre-millennium sequel--though spiced by McGwire's run to 500--features premium long-ball hitters and bulked-up banjo hitters alike, jacking grand slams at an amazing rate and sending a conga line of runners snaking around the bases. As major league baseball morphs into a game that features slow-pitch-softball scores with the kitsch of Home Run Derby ("Gee, Sammy, you sure got all of that one, didn'tcha?"), the power game has become baseball's new religion, and ladder-climbing is no longer reserved for a precious few.

One of the gatekeepers of the power temple is Billy Williams, a Hall of Famer who hit 426 home runs in the, majors and now serves as the Cubs' bench coach. Williams helped Sosa climb the lower rung of the power ladder before he turned the reins over to current hitting coach Jeff Pentland.

"It starts in the minor leagues," Williams says. "In batting practice in the minors, you kind of recognize that ball that you can hit out of the park, the one that's a natural for you. There are guys who don't (hit for power) in the minors, but up here the pitchers don't miss by much, so if you make pretty good contact in the hitting area and can hit the ball outside and drive the ball inside, you're going to be able to hit the ball out of the park."

That process, Williams says, is refined during the first couple of years at the major league level. "As you get stronger," he says, "your bat gets quicker, so this is why you go from 10 to 12 home runs to like 20 to 25. You begin to know what they throw you and what they throw in different situations, and that way you can get a little head start. You cheat a little bit to get the bat head out front."

The Yankees' Jeter is perhaps the quintessential example of a future power hitter who has made significant adjustments to vault into the middle tier. After establishing himself as a .300 hitter with a picture-perfect inside-out swing during his first two seasons, Jeter made the jump from 10 to 19 homers last year. This season, he's making a quantum leap in virtually every offensive category. He's among the American League leaders in hitting, ranks in the top 15 in RBIs and already has reached the 20-homer plateau.

"I worked on adjusting my swing during the off-season, getting my top hand over and driving the ball," he says. "I still consider myself a line-drive contact hitter, but sometimes the ball will leave the park. I worked on driving the ball and hitting the gaps, trying to hit more doubles and triples, not necessarily sitting down and saying I want to hit a home run. I'm a fastball hitter, (so) it's a matter of getting extended and getting pitches that are up. A lot of it is experience--learning what pitches to drive, what pitches you can't, getting ahead in the count and learning what pitches to look for."

If Jeter is looking for power-hitting role models, he would do well to check the rest of the Yankees' batting order. Though the Yankees aren't a power team per se, the lineup is marked by productive hitters who get 20 to 30 homers. Tino Martinez, for instance, is a classic middle-tier power hitter who took a similar approach to the one Jeter is exploring.

"Early in my career, I used to hit the ball all over the field," Martinez says. "Then they pitched me in a lot, and I had to learn to turn on the ball. As you start turning on the ball, they start pitching you away, so you've just gotta keep adjusting to the way they' re trying to get you out. You start realizing how you get yourself out a lot of the time swinging at the pitcher's pitches, and then you look in certain zones and certain areas to drive the ball.