David Laurila talks hitting with Tigers outfield prospect Justice Bigbie. One of the more interesting parts of the conversation contains this bit on velocity training (emphasis added):

Laurila: How high do you dial up the velocity?

Bigbie: “So, in the offseason I’ve kind of mapped out my hitting program… maybe not program, but how I plan to operate. I’ll start with a normal BP fastball for the first couple of weeks, kind of getting back into things — getting my swing back underneath me — and then I’ll kind of crank it up a little more. With the baseballs, you can crank it up to the low-to-mid-90s, depending on how far you are from the machine. You can scoot up a little bit and have it closer than the 60 feet, six inches that the mound would be.

“This past year, I started using the foam balls, just so it doesn’t hurt your hands as much off the machine. I mean, you can crank that thing up to where it’s close to 100, or even 101-102, depending on where you’re at in terms of reaction time.”

FanGraphs.com

Earlier in the discussion he talked about failing a lot in the cage against high velocities. Part of that failure is missing the sweet spot of the bat, which causes the vibrations that hurt the hands.

One way we learn is through positive and negative feedback. Missing the sweet spot is negative feedback, and should push batters toward doing things that avoid the vibrations. Modern players, however, don’t get the full feedback as batting gloves dampen those vibrations. Batting gloves make the sweet spot a bit bigger in terms of what the batter feels, not necessarily in terms of how the ball reacts off the bat. The gloves allow the batter to swing harder against high velocities, helping to lead to more home runs and more strikeouts.

Would a simple banning of batting gloves help reduce two of the three true outcomes? One would think that the true negative feedback from missing the sweet spot might lead to shorter swings aimed at meeting the ball on the sweet spot. One would hope that would lead to more line drives into the outfield for hits, and more hard hit ground balls through the infield. Some great batters might even try directing the ball, a la Ty Cobb.

I suspect this would lead to a huge fall in offense the first season implemented, and that is probably something MLB doesn’t want to see. Luckily, the league is now in the habit of testing rules in the minors, so we would get some idea of the long term effect if this was implemented for three years at AA, with it sliding up to AAA and then the majors eventually. That would train the upcoming generation. It could even be like the hockey helmet rule, where veteran players allowed not to wear helmets if they were more comfortable without them. It’s something worth investigating.