What do the following players have in common; Giancarlo Stanton, Adrian Beltre, Anthony Rizzo, Javier Baez and Kris Bryant?
They were all under the tutelage of hitting instructor Anthony Iapoce.
The Astoria-native and current Chicago Cubs hitting coach held a hitting clinic for a group of young ballplayers today at MaX Effort Baseball in Farmingdale from 11am-2pm. Each player received personalize instruction from a coach that was hired by the Cubs to revive their offense.
After two hours of instruction, the players all met in the cage for some Q & A with the master hitting coach. Here are some of the highlights of what he had to say:
- Hitting off a tee is good. In fact, there’s only one player on the Cubs (David Bote) that doesn’t begin his daily routine with a round off the tee. It serves several purposes such as creating positive thoughts, visualization and you can move it wherever you want to work on different things such as using your hands more or legs.
- If you want to be good, you have to be willing to train by yourself.
- Anthony Rizzo sends him video of him hitting off the tee in his garage to see what he can tweak.
- MLB has the highest velocity in history and yet pitches are throwing less fastballs than ever. This means it’s harder than every to hit.
- Do not be discouraged by failure. Failure is part of the game and feeling discouraged creates negative habits. Most slumps are started by a fear of failure.
- Do not be afraid to swing-and-miss.
- Not everyone has the same swing. In fact, no two swings are alike much like snowflakes.
- Certain components of a swing can be the same but never the whole thing.
Iapoce is a down-to-earth guy that has a charisma about him that makes players gravitate towards him. He played at Lamar University before getting drafted by the Milwaukee Brewers in the 33rd round of the 1994 MLB Draft. He played nine seasons in the minor leagues with a career average of .272 with a .345 OBP. His last season was in 2015 with the Gary Southshore Railcats of the Frontier League.
