December 4 - Miami Marlins’ first baseman and Westfield graduate Justin Bour returned to his former high school yesterday and led a panel of current and former professional players and local coaches in a hitting workshop attended by hundreds of NVTBL’s coaches and players.

Justin was joined by his brother Jason, Joe Rizzo, Michael Katz, Marshall’s coach Aaron Tarr, Centreville’s coach Scott Rowland, Freedom South-Riding’s coach Mark Wrighte and former longtime coach Ron Tugwell.

The panel discussed topics such as incorporating launch angles, swing plane and their mental approach. Here are the key excerpts from what they had to say.

Justin Bour: “You need to understand who you are as a hitter. What I focus on is going to be different than what Dee Gordon is. For me, I don’t go in the cage with my hitting coach and worry about my launch angle. I go in the cage to work on specific things. You can take 50 swings off a tee and not get any better. Or you can go out there and take 10 swings with max focus and work on things and actually get better. I think that is more important than quantity.”

Jason Bour: “If you teach young hitters to get under the ball their barrel is going to drag and that leads to bad contact. For younger guys, launch angle is not as important as getting to the baseball, staying inside the baseball and being short and quick in the zone and focusing on making solid contact. Hitting the corners of the cage and hitting line drives with backspin is what I focused on.”

Rizzo: “I worked a lot off a tee working with Justin and he taught me to take the same swing off the tee as I would in a game. The best thing for you to do is to replicate your swing in a game off the tee. I think it’s more about quality and not necessarily quantity. The last thing you want to do is swing tired because it creates bad habits.”

Katz: “You want to be matching the angle that the ball is coming in from and when we talk swing plane, we want our bat to match the path of the ball. That’s going to allow you to drive balls in the gap. The one thing I do to stay inside the baseball is to aim to hit the baseball off the tee on the inside-half. If I have the target to hit the ball on the inside, my hands are going to be in instead of hitting the outside of the baseball and hitting around it. That helps you get the backspin and carry.”

Tarr: “Launch angle only matters if you hit the ball hard. Hitting a ball with a launch angle from 10 to 25 degrees is considered a line drive and is a hit more times than not.”

Rowland: “If you are ahead in the count, I want our hitters thinking about hitting a double. I’d rather have a hitter take a great swing and miss than hit a weak ground ball. A swing and a miss when you are ahead in the count is not a bad thing.”

Tugwell: “With two strikes, it’s not a mechanical change but a mental adjustment. If put the ball in play with two strikes, the other team might make a mistake.”

Wrighte: “The best drills players can do is working off a tee. Players should focus on moving their feet around the tee. This will allow for players to find their bat path and be able to get to the ball. I also recommend swinging different sized bats to get hitters to feel the barrel getting to the baseball.”