The #1 Common Trait of Elite Hitters

By BK, Athletic Hitting Development
Complete Hitters Are Built… It’s Earned!

What do the best hitters in the world have in common? It’s not what most people think.

Ask a room full of parents and coaches what separates elite hitters and you’ll hear the same answers. Strength. Fast hands. A pretty swing. Great numbers on the exit velo and launch angle reports.

All of those are good. I want every one of them for my hitters. But after 52 years of playing, coaching and scouting, none of them is the trait I see in every elite hitter.

1. Strength? Fast hands? Pretty swing? Analytics darling? Good, but not #1.

Let’s go through the usual suspects.

• Strength. It matters. Force has to come from somewhere. But plenty of strong hitters can’t hit, and plenty of elite hitters aren’t the biggest guy in the room.
• Fast hands. Bat speed buys time. But fast hands that don’t believe they’re on time still swing late, or don’t swing at all.
• A pretty swing. I love a sound swing with good Mechanically Advantaged Angles (MAA). But pretty swings go 0-for-4 every night. Some of the best hitters ever had swings coaches would have “fixed.”
• The analytics darling. Exit velo, launch angle and bat speed numbers are great tools. A hitter can top the leaderboard in the cage and still freeze in the box.

Every one of those helps. None of them is the thing every elite hitter has.

The #1 common trait of elite hitters is irrational confidence.

2. The #1 trait: irrational confidence

Somehow, someway, elite hitters create an irrational confidence that they are going to get it done. Every time.

What does “irrational confidence” mean? It’s a strong belief in your own success that doesn’t wait for the facts, the stats or the odds to agree. It’s not a delusion. It’s a choice to compete like you’ll win, knowing full well you might not.

For a hitter, that belief does three things:

• It kills fear. You stop worrying about striking out and take your best swing.
• It builds grit. It keeps you coming back after the 0-for-4.
• It beats better arms. The underdog needs it most to beat the pitcher who’s supposed to win.

They know hitting is failure. The best hitters in the game fail most of the time. That’s exactly why the confidence has to be irrational. If it had to be rational, it would go away after every 0-for-4.

And when they fail? The other team got lucky. The pitcher made his one good pitch of the night. Next time it’s mine.

Elite hitters always think they’re gonna have a good at-bat. Always.

That’s not arrogance. It’s a decision. The elite hitter decides before the at-bat that he’s going to win it, and he walks up there like it.

3. Own it in the cage. Believe it in the box.

Now understand what irrational confidence does not mean. It doesn’t mean you ignore your mistakes or blame everybody else in practice.

In practice, you own every miss. You look at the video. You find the fix. You do the work nobody sees.

But when you step in the box, the work is done. You stop fixing and start competing. You believe, no matter what the last at-bat said, no matter who’s on the mound, no matter the count.

Own it in the cage. Believe it in the box.

Most hitters get this backwards. They’re confident in the cage and full of doubt in the box. They think about mechanics with two strikes and a game on the line. The elite hitter did all his thinking before the game. In the box, he just sees it and attacks it.

4. It’s built, not born

Here’s the part people miss. Irrational confidence isn’t something you either have or you don’t. It’s built.

It comes from the work. When you know you’ve built your body, built your swing, trained your eyes and trained your mind, believing is easy. You’re not hoping. You’re cashing in.

That’s why we train all 4 pillars at AHD: the swing, strength and explosiveness, the hitting processor and the mental approach. Every pillar you build gives you one more reason to believe. A hitter who skips the work and tries to “just be confident” is faking it, and the box finds out fast.

Confidence you didn’t earn breaks. Confidence you built holds.

5. How to build irrational confidence

Confidence is a skill. You can train it like any other part of hitting.

• Stack evidence. Keep a record of hard-hit balls, good takes and quality at-bats, not just hits. Read it before games.
• Prepare like you mean it. The more you’ve done, the more you believe. Preparation is the fuel.
• Have a plan every at-bat. Know what you’re hunting. A hitter with a plan is hard to rattle.
• Use the same routine every pitch. Step out, breathe, one cue, step in. The routine is your home base.
• Reset fast. Bad pitch, bad swing, bad at-bat: let it go before the next one. The next pitch is always the most important one.
• Talk to yourself like a winner. “He got lucky. Next one’s mine.” Not “Here we go again.”
• Carry yourself like it. Head up, shoulders back, walk to the box like you own it. The body leads the mind.

6. For parents and coaches: protect it

Confidence is easy to break and slow to rebuild. The adults around a young hitter have more to do with it than they think.

• Coach the cage, not the box. Save mechanical fixes for practice. In the game, give them one simple thought or none at all.
• Praise the right things. A hard out and a good take are wins. Say so.
• Watch the car ride home. Your hitter doesn’t need another coach after a game. They need to hear that you love watching them play.
• Never let one at-bat define them. The next one belongs to them.

Coaches, the same goes for your whole lineup. A dugout full of hitters who believe is a problem for every pitcher you see. If you want help building that across your team, AHD offers team pricing on every course and brings hands-on team hitting camps and clinics to teams and organizations.

AHD • BACKSPIN3/3

THELESSON.

• Do the work.
• Own it in the cage.
• Believe it in the box.
• They got lucky.
• Next one’s mine.

Complete Hitters Are Built…Earned.

AHDBackSpinAthletic Hitting Development

Want to go deeper? Read How Good Can You Be? 6 Things Elite Hitters Do, or start the free Mental Approach Lesson 1: The At-Bat Audit. Lesson 10, Confidence Built on Evidence, is where we train this trait directly.

Quick answers

Don’t collect drills. Build a complete hitter.

Complete Hitters Are Built… It’s Earned!

This article is part of the AHD guide The Mental Game of Hitting. Start there for the full picture and every related article.