The King of Swing

Jaime Cevallos sees the future of baseball, and it is teeming with .400 hitters who routinely hit 80 home runs a season, and no one will point a finger at anything other than another baseball leaving another ballpark.

"I know what's possible," Cevallos said.

Cevallos is a swing coach. Not a hitting coach, but a coach who is interested in one part of the swing, the slot position of the bat as it meets the baseball.

Change the slot position, let the legs and thighs - the body's bigger muscles - do the work and you have tomorrow's hitter, one who churns out triple crown seasons.

"Minor changes can improve your statistics drastically," Cevallos said.

As proof, the 33-year-old Cevallos offers himself.

But before we get to his story, it should be noted Cevallos worked with Ben Zobrist of the Tampa Bay Rays and Drew Sutton of the Cincinnati Reds before the 2008 season.

Cevallos and Zobrist met by chance at Showtime Sports Academy in Franklin, Tenn., and Zobrist allowed Cevallos to tinker with a swing that wasn't all that productive.

Here's what happened: Before working with Cevallos, Zobrist had three home runs, a .234 on-base percentage and a .275 slugging percentage at the major-league level. After working with Cevallos, gentle Ben became "Zorilla" with 29 home runs, a .387 on-base percentage and a .532 slugging percentage.

Zobrist attributes his success to a number of factors. On the suggestion of former teammate Rocco Baldelli, he swung harder and from the suggestion of pitcher James Shields, he stopped chasing pitches out of the strike zone.

A batter's mental approach is a wonderful thing, Cevallos said, but he added that it is overrated.

"The baseball doesn't care how positive you are," he said.

So, on the instruction of his swing coach, Zobrist changed the slot position of his swing. He dropped his elbows to create a flatter plane as the bat moves through the strike zone and toward the baseball.

"The numbers before I worked with Jaime compared to after speak for themselves," Zobrist says on Cevallos' Web site ( www.theswingmechanic.com).

Sutton also saw dramatic improvement, from nine home runs, a .351 on-base percentage and a .388 slugging percentage in the 480 at-bats before working with Cevallos to 20 home runs, a .408 on-base percentage and a .523 slugging percentage in the 520 at-bats that followed.

Minor changes, drastic results.

Cevallos now counts Rays minor-leaguer Justin Ruggiano as a client.

He runs his business, The Swing Mechanic, out of Grapevine, Texas. He does his work strictly off video.

"Technology is a wonderful thing," Cevallos said. "The first training aid I tell them to get is a video camera."

Today's technology wasn't available in 1996 when Cevallos was trying to make a go of it as a college baseball player. A light-hitting infielder, Cevallos walked onto the team at Mount St. Mary's University in Emmitsburg, Md. He batted .197 with no home runs, a .277 on-base percentage and a .211 slugging percentage.

"I was frustrated. I was embarrassed," he said.

So he spent the offseason searching for the magical key to hitting. He found himself studying pictures of the game's top hitters, from Babe Ruth to Ted Williams to Ken Griffey Jr.

From the photos he discovered this: They all brought the bat through the hitting zone on a flat plane, with their elbows down.

Eureka!

Cevallos adjusted his swing accordingly. In 1997, he batted .364 with four home runs, a .466 on-base percentage and a .523 slugging percentage.

"It was such a drastic turnaround," he said. "I never hit a home run in my life, not even in Little League. I hit two the first week of the season."

That's when Cevallos discovered his purpose in life: The pursuit of the most productive swing. He worked in retail at a golf course for the next 10 years while studying the swing.

"I was just chasing it," he said. "I know the swing can be figured out. I know I'm close."

The improvements shown by Zobrist and Sutton help validate his beliefs.

"But that's the tip of the iceberg," Cevallos said.

He can see a day when every major-league team employs a swing coach.

Rays manager Joe Maddon, as forward a thinker as there is in baseball, said he can see players using swing coaches in the offseason but isn't sure the game will become so micromanaged that you will find one in every clubhouse.

"I think it's headed in that direction, but in a different way," Maddon said. "I think you might see two hitting coaches on a team, one for the mental side, one for the physical side."

Cevallos said that for swing coaches to find their way into major league baseball, it's going to take more than a breakout season from Zobrist. It's going to take, as he said, someone to swim away from the shore of centuries-old conventional thinking and commit himself full time to the Cevallos way of hitting.

It's going to take an unbelievable monster of a season.

"What I'm looking for is major changes," Cevallos said. "I won't be satisfied until I produce the first 80 home run guy with a .400 average. Someday I'm going to work with a guy who's going to change the game."