Is Driveline Ruining Paul Goldschmidt's Swing?

all right we're going to take a look at Paul goldshmid so many of you guys probably know Paul goldshmid has been working with Drive Line the past two years and drive line is I'm going to tell you what I think it is from my perspective it's kind of a shoot off of this saber metrics kind of movement but what's happened in the Player Development field is that they've just assumed let's just throw numbers basically at this Player Development Area and just go about it in a more geeky fashion and that should work so they've gotten these machines that basically give more data and the the the knee-jerk assumption here is that now that we have more data we therefore know what's going on and the funny thing is is no people don't have a good story of what's going on they just are swimming and even drowning in data somebody at some point has to say what is what story is the data telling us that's the value of all the data but what's going on in swing instruction and Player Development in general is that they are just just drowning in this data and thinking that oh they must be on The Cutting Edge because they're collecting so much data what you actually find is drive line or guys who are you know who who Pride themselves on collecting all this data they're pretty much Clinging On To What is safe what is already being taught or has been taught in baseball circles and they're not really taking any chances and saying wait a second this is the story that the data is telling us here's a whole brand new way of looking at the swing and so what I think has been going on with Paul goldshmid working with drive line is he's slowly regressing these guys are quick to attach themselves to these major league players when it's convenient for them but they don't ever come out and say hey look I worked with this guy and he hasn't done as well Paul goldshmid is one of the best right-handed hitters in the game today he's the 160th best pound-for-pound hitter on my list he gets a lot of front humorous compression he leaves his hands behind these are all things that are going to be coached out of his swing if he goes and sees someone who teaches conventional methods and drive line is teaching conventional methods from 2011 to 2022 prior to working with drivve line he hit a home run every 18.8 one at bats with a 295 batting average since he's been starting to get Consulting with drivve line in 2023 he has 25 at bats per home run and a 259 batting average so his power and his consistency has gone down let's take a look at what they're working on because I promise you that's going to hold some Clues as to why his performance has gone in the wrong direction yeah I don't know if like you were trying to hit those lower but like almost all of that was like pretty low ball flight and then like as soon as I went away it was like the the rollover not be able to like work up through that pitch and like stay through those yeah just like as this started to come with that body it just like you were low ball fight that way then we're not able to cover that like away what he's saying is you don't want to pull your they always say this pull your front shoulder open that's going to make it so that you're rolling over on pitches the actually the opposite is true and he also says that it's the pulling of the front shoulder open that's not allowing you to quote unquote stay through on that low and Away pitch that's a misconception what leads to rolling over is a slower body rotation and the hands actually getting out ahead of the body exactly what he wants Paul goldshmid to do more of if you want to stop rolling over what you have to do is rotate more through contact and if you're working off a team move your your contact point back closer towards where the catcher would be and this will allow you to make more connected contact positions and it'll just push contact back farther so that you have a little bit more time to see the pitch anyways and you're going to get more mass behind the hit let's take a look at gold Schmid's swing here see look you can see this is not the way gold Schmid normally swings he's halting his body rotation and letting his hand fire out almost independently and achieving a much Le much less connected position there at contact than he's than he normally achieves so this is what happens a lot to these Major Leaguers and I'm telling you guys at any level you hear you're seeing a pound-for-pound all-time great right in front of your eyes being persuaded to go along with the the conventional instruction and and you're starting to see a decline it's unbelievable we saw that you know similar thing happened with Tiger Woods on a much larger scale a an elite elite ball Striker starts getting in the mix of conventional instruction and golf and literally struggles to this day I mean he never has gotten the swing back that he started with back in 99 and 2000 when he had his best years Ty got do that he was so good but if he just went along and never changed he would have won minimum 22 maybe more he would have gone down as the greatest athlete the world had ever seen men or woman so for me I look at all these top players can't play anymore Tiger Woods eventually said well I'm G back to the way I used to SW and won the moners and now we're seeing Paul goldshmid being influenced by conventional instruction to his detriment it will eventually seep into your swing and you will get worse just because you're working on swing mechanics a lot of these Pros think hey you know what I've never put time into the swing you know maybe I'll get serious about it and and do my due diligence they just don't understand that the swing is a different game you can actually regress working on your swing if you're working on the wrong things you will go backwards and it's a brutal game like that but that's kind of why to me it's the most interesting game too there's a lot of risk but there is a lot of reward if you get it right there's a lot of reward now Paul gold Schmid's a guy who had a great swing to begin with his swing is pretty spoton in terms of being lead armed dominant I mean it felt like I was closed but then I swung but I was like Back Square when I hit it like you said just like trying to like decelerate cuz it feels like I'm that front side's already out it's like oh no he didn't say d accelerate it's a different way to say fire the hands at the ball take the body out of it the idea that you have to Halt one body part and then that's the only way the other body part can fire and then you have to Halt that one and then the other body part will fire and you have to keep kind of halting your body rotation in order to deliver the barrel that's just a false understanding and it's more of this get the body out of the Swing type of mechanics that are being taught and have been taught for years what's so great about Paul gold Schmid's swing and the reason why he's an elite pound-for-pound hitter of all time is that he rotated through contact he stayed very connected as he went through contact and as far as that outside pitch still hit the outside pitch as connected as you can be rotate through the hit this idea that you need to stop your shoulder rotation and fire the hands outward in a direct line towards the baseball in order to to be square longer is a complete myth it's actually the opposite if you want to be square longer with the barrel you need to get used to rotating your body hard through contact typically it's like if you're under coiled at the beginning you either like you're going to feel like you're flying off like if you still don't like ever coil here your compensation is just going to be add here to try to buy time like honestly I don't understand what he's saying except for that he's making the swing very confusing if we look at that ball flight you can see the slice on it you know you can see that he's probably trying to push his hands out towards contact because there is quite a bit of slice if you're going to use ballf flight as a as a feedback is the ball slicing you don't want it to slice now we can kind of go over like how we'll do more like a traditional bass speed day this is Barrel loaded this is handle loaded these are really good for like training movement and almost like weight training for your swing just like resistance and then like on these days just like swinging these bats like as fast as you can it kind of bothers me that swing mechanics is is so oversimplified like people just don't they don't really seem to be curious about the swing they don't look into it too much here's a bat with a heavy handle swing it as hard as you can here's a bat with a heavy barrel swing it as hard as you can let's make it let's measure how fast you're swinging it and then in a week we'll measure it again and we're just going to try to get faster and faster I don't know you guys maybe haven't noticed but I believe it's pretty apparent that when you look at the best hitters they aren't just swinging faster than everyone else they have a smoother more efficient swing there's something that looks different about their swing and that is because their mechanics are making everything look effortless and this whole idea these days is that speed fast launch quickness fastest Barrel possible and everyone is extremely tight and so they're expending so much energy and getting worse results we need to move towards a more fluid and effortless swing my book swing like griffy means something I I think that we all need to move towards more a griffy like swing he made it look so smooth his swing was so smooth and he hit balls so far and effortlessly precisely because something is very right in his mechanics so let's see how the year pans out for Paul Goldman it's not looking great right now I mean right now he's at a 208 batting average he's got two home runs and 101 at bats if you guys want to learn about how to get a more lead armed dominant structure read my book swing like griffy at the swing mechanic.com I also have my lead arm training bat and I also have online consultations and you can also join this YouTube channel and see my entire baseball swing course I'll see you next time [Music]