Sony Exec Develops A Better Way To Swing The Bat
Would you listen if I said you could improve your batting average by 30 percent? Roger Hart, the former Director of Quality Systems and Six Sigma Deployment at Sony Electronics, has developed a Six Sigma system to improve your swing called Pivotal Swing.
“After years of working with Sony to implement these techniques in production, engineering, logistics, salesand pretty much everywhere else, it was only natural as a fan of baseball thatI would see the potential benefits of the techniques in baseball,” Hart, who has also come out with a book, Pivotal Swing- How to Fundamentally Change the Game of Baseball, said.
Hart analyzed thousands of swings and devised new methods by using a system called Process Improvement “by identifyingmistakes, reducing causes and minimizing variability in any process.” Hart found “several ways” to “dramatically improve the hitting process simplifying, increasingaccuracy and balance leading to an average 30% improvement using the Six Sigma methods.”
Hart said that if major league teams start to use these Pivotal Swing methods, we will see the first .400 hitter since Ted Williams did it in 1941. Check the website and book out; but only if you want to improve your hitting stroke.
Thanks for taking time to let your readers know of this great book and the findings we published in it. It is important to note that this book is not just for baseball players. Though the readers will get a bit of info on the book by going to the link you provided, they can go to our website http://www.PivotalSwing.com and read the Foreword, Preface, Introduction and see the detailed TOC (Table of Contents) as well as a Summary. These will all give insight to the contents. However, nothing can replace reading the book to learn how to improve hitting and change the game of baseball!
The biggest reason the book will be beneficial to more than players is the impact it will have on the game. The title has a double meaning. Though it is the name and trademark for the new swing, it is also a Pivotal Swing in the overall game of baseball. Players and coaches will learn how the method was developed and all the benefits it provides. All the family members of players and coaches will want to find out about the new method and its impact on the game. Parents and family members may read the book before their younger players and realize the need to have the player read it too.
As the first known application of Six Sigma to player performance methods in professional baseball or any other sport, it offers a unique opportunity for hundreds of thousands of people that have been trained in Six Sigma methods to see the tools they have learned at work on a process that most wouldn’t consider. It will reinforce their training that the methods work on any process and that the less complex and practical tools are very powerful in these kinds of applications. There are a lot of people that have both training and application of process improvement (like Six Sigma) as well as an interest in baseball.
Although the improvements were based upon analysis of the pros (and some college players), they provide tremendous improvement for younger players. The amount of improvement for young players is amplified. By reducing a wide range of problems in their methods, they get and even larger amount of improvement. You can imagine, since we found core level improvements for the pros, how much more they are going to help the younger players. Our testing showed over a 30% improvement for players with 8-10 years of experience, it could easily be 60% or 80% improvement for younger players.
We invite you to step up to the plate, dig into your comfortable batting stance and then enjoy reading this provocative book.
Roger Hart, author
On to my grandkids and their parents, never to young to start. They all love baseball