Ryan LaMarre is a former 2nd round draft pick by the Reds (2010) who has moved up level by level over the past few years and finished out 2012 with a full season in Pensacola playing center field for the Blue Wahoos. LaMarre played injured for most of the season, dealing with plantar fasciitis that limited his plus-speed at times. While posting the video of the day on our Facebook page I noticed just how different LaMarre’s swing was in April during the Reds Futures Game versus where it was when I saw him play in August while in Pensacola.
Let’s take a look at the first change.
In his set up we can see several things right away. First is his hand/elbow positioning. In April, his elbow was at a 90 degree angle, where as in August it was much higher than that. His front leg is also quite different. In April it was more upright, while in August it was bent a lot more, but not exactly more crouched.
Here is the next difference:
In April, LaMarre employed a single step then plant swing. In August, while you can’t see it here (look below for the video), he kept his front foot closer to the ground with a slight step forward, planted his toe (as seen above) before rotating his foot to the ground to transfer his weight.
Here we can see the final positioning of the feet came about. In August, as mentioned earlier, his foot just rotated around and planted after some hesitation. In April, his foot is planted in roughly the same position, but it got there quite a bit differently as he just lifted, took a stride, then planted.
Video
April 2012
August 2012