Ricky Romero

Sometimes if you're thinking about things in the batter's box, whether it's what pitch you want to go after, swing mechanics, sometimes that can almost just freeze you a bit in the batter's box.

And that's what it looked like to me on that pitch.

Yeah, and now I could be over-exaggerating with the four inches.

You know, somebody's going to go over there and measure his hands.

Sure, but it's visibly noticeable.

To me, and now sometimes I see things that aren't necessarily there on film because I get too far into the weeds.

But, like, to me, it looked like his hands were higher last year than they were this year at that point in his swing when his heel is hitting the ground.

And to your point about him swinging outside of the zone, well, when you're – one, if you're late on pitches –

and you're trying to be early, and you simply just try to swing earlier, well, then now all of a sudden the time for your decision-making becomes even less because you're just trying to swing a little bit earlier.

Then you work that in with a shorter swing.

Now your hands are just flying straight out in front of you, and they're getting there quicker than they normally do.

So you're, again, not giving yourself a chance to let that ball travel.

And you hear baseball players talk about this all the time.

When they're hitting their best in the box, it just feels like time is moving slowly.

or like those pitches just like aren't even, I mean, it looks like the pitch almost slows down when it's on its way to you.

And I've been in those spots where it didn't matter what I did, no matter how much film I watched, it just felt like those pitches were getting on me so quickly that I couldn't figure out a way to adjust.

Like that's why we talk about the process and not worrying about the results.

This is,

what makes baseball so difficult and so challenging because it is so hard to not look at the results and not see the numbers because you just want to go up there and get the job done for your team.

You want to go up there and be the person that's going to drive the ball 450 feet over the green monster.