2026 Summer Hitting Club Recap: Adjusting Through the Season

When I created the Summer Hitting Club this year, I didn't want it to be another place for players to simply take more swings.

Players get plenty of swings during a baseball season. What often disappears once the season begins is the opportunity to actually work on their hitting.

The offseason gives players months to build their swings, improve their movements and prepare for competition. Once games begin, schedules become packed with practices, tournaments and travel. Training becomes less frequent at exactly the time when hitters begin experiencing new challenges.

That was the purpose of the Summer Hitting Club. I wanted to give players somewhere to work through those challenges while they were actually happening.

The response was better than I expected. We had a great turnout throughout the summer, with players ranging from 10U through high school and college baseball, all the way to the professional level.

A 10-year-old and a professional hitter obviously aren't dealing with the same challenges, but every hitter eventually reaches a point during the season when something changes.

That's when they have to figure out how to adjust.

The Season Changes the Hitter

It's unrealistic to expect a hitter to feel exactly the same from the beginning of the season until the end.

The body accumulates fatigue. Timing can change. Movements can slowly become different. Confidence can fluctuate. The quality of pitching changes, and opposing teams begin recognizing tendencies and attacking hitters differently. That's one reason we often see players start a season performing extremely well and then experience a drop-off as the summer progresses.

It doesn't automatically mean they've suddenly become worse hitters.

Something that worked earlier in the season might not be working quite as well anymore. A hitter might need a mechanical adjustment, a change in timing or approach, or simply need to get back to something they were doing when they were having success.

The difficult part is identifying what has actually changed before a small issue becomes a much bigger one.

Sometimes Coaches Help Create the Slump

There's another part of in-season hitting that I think deserves more attention.

Sometimes the player isn't the one who creates the problem.

Hitters hear a lot of voices throughout a season. Coaches, instructors and other people around the game all have opinions about what they should be doing. After a few bad games, those opinions usually get louder.

• Move your hands.

• Change your stance.

• Get your foot down.

• Stay back.

• Swing down.

• Swing up.

• Be quicker.

Before long, a player who might have simply been going through the normal ups and downs of baseball has changed three or four things and doesn't know what they're supposed to feel anymore.

Now we've potentially taken a hitter who was making outs and turned them into a hitter who can't find their swing.

Making an out doesn't automatically mean something is mechanically wrong. A player can square up three baseballs and have nothing to show for it. They can have a difficult weekend after several great weeks. Sometimes they simply run into good pitching.

That's baseball.

The danger comes when every poor result becomes a reason to change something.

Sometimes an adjustment is necessary. Other times the hitter needs to trust what they're doing and continue competing.

Knowing which situation you're looking at is an important part of coaching.

What the Summer Hitting Club Became

The Summer Hitting Club gave players a place to bring whatever they were experiencing in games into the cage.

There wasn't one predetermined program that everyone had to follow.

A younger hitter might need help controlling their movements or consistently getting on time. An older player might be dealing with how pitchers were attacking them. At the college and professional levels, the adjustments could become much more detailed because the margin for error gets smaller.

That meant the training had to be based on the hitter standing in front of me and what was actually happening to them in games. Some days that meant mechanical work. Other days it meant timing, approach or swing decisions. Sometimes it was simply helping a hitter get back to something they had moved away from.

That's what I wanted an in-season program to be.

There's a Difference Between Training and Coaching

This summer reinforced something I've believed for a long time: there's a difference between giving hitting instruction and understanding how to coach a hitter.

Anyone can set up a drill, throw batting practice or point out something that looks different in a swing.

The harder part is understanding why it's happening.

Is what you're seeing actually causing the problem? Is it a mechanical issue at all? Is the hitter late because of their swing or because their timing has changed? Are they struggling because pitchers have changed the way they're attacking them? Is there even a problem, or are the results simply making it look like there is one?

Those are very different situations.

And during the season, the answers matter because these players have to perform now. They may have another game tomorrow or a tournament that weekend. The wrong information at the wrong time can create a bigger problem than whatever you were originally trying to fix.

That's why I don't believe an instructor proves their value by how many changes they make or how many drills they know.

The value is in understanding what you're looking at, figuring out what the hitter needs and being able to communicate it in a way they can actually use.

Teaching Hitters to Understand Themselves

As the weeks went on, some of the most valuable parts of the sessions became the conversations.

Instead of immediately telling players what I saw, I wanted to know what they were experiencing.

• What are pitchers doing to you?

• What are you missing?

• How does your timing feel?

• What are you thinking about at the plate?

• Has somebody asked you to change something?

Those answers can tell you a lot.

They also make players participants in their own development instead of simply waiting for somebody else to tell them what to do.

The goal isn't to create hitters who need an instructor standing beside the cage every time something goes wrong. I want players to eventually recognize their tendencies, understand what helps them succeed and have some idea of where to start when things don't feel right.

That understanding becomes more advanced as the level of baseball increases, but the process can start at a young age.

The Results Showed Up in Games

Ultimately, I didn't just want players to look better in the cage. I wanted the work to show up when it mattered.

It did.

When I compared each player's game performance before the Summer Hitting Club with their performance during it, every player showed improvement.

And that improvement looked different depending on the hitter.

Some players made significant jumps in their offensive numbers, including batting averages that went from around .350 to .390 and, in another case, from around .200 to .500. Another player improved across every major offensive category, including a 40-point increase in OPS. One player hit their first home run, while another made adjustments that helped them go from limited playing time to earning more opportunities in the lineup and producing when those opportunities came.

Those are very different accomplishments, but that's exactly the point.

Success during a season isn't going to look the same for every hitter. For one player, it might mean increasing their production. For another, it's maintaining success as the season gets longer. It might be reaching a milestone for the first time or improving enough to earn opportunities that weren't there before.

What mattered to me was that the work was translating beyond the batting cage.

The players weren't just training better. They were performing better.

The Players Made the Program

As rewarding as the results were, the players themselves made the Summer Hitting Club what it became.

The turnout was strong each week, and the groups were genuinely fun to coach.

Players came ready to work. They competed and challenged each other while still supporting one another. There was plenty of joking around, but when it was time to hit, they worked.

That's exactly the type of environment I want.

Development doesn't have to feel like punishment to be productive. Players can be challenged, held accountable and expected to work while still enjoying themselves.

By the time the original program was coming to an end, we had built something I didn't really want to stop.

So I Extended It

The Summer Hitting Club wasn't originally scheduled to run through the end of August.

I decided to extend it.

Every player who participated was given additional sessions through the end of the month at no extra cost.

The players earned it.

They had consistently shown up, worked and created an environment that made the sessions enjoyable to coach. There was also still baseball left to play, so there were still opportunities to help them finish their seasons.

Rather than shutting everything down because we had reached the original end date, we kept the cages going.

A Successful First Summer

Looking back, I'm incredibly proud of what the Summer Hitting Club became in its first year.

The turnout was better than I expected, the groups were great to work with and, most importantly, the work translated into games.

That's why I wanted to create an in-season hitting program in the first place.

We spend months preparing hitters for their seasons, but development can't stop once the schedule begins. Baseball is constantly presenting new challenges, and learning how to deal with them is part of becoming a better hitter.

This summer gave players a place to do that while they were actually competing.

The fact that the players kept showing up, kept improving and were having enough fun that I decided to extend the program through the end of August says everything I need to say about the first Summer Hitting Club.

We didn't just prepare hitters to play. We helped them adjust while they were playing.