5 Questions to Ask When Looking for a Hitting Coach

1. Do You Understand the Differences Between Fastpitch and Baseball Hitting?

This is the first thing to find out — and a lot of families skip it. A large number of hitting coaches come from baseball backgrounds, and while the fundamentals overlap, fastpitch has real differences that matter.

The pitching distance is shorter (43 feet at the high school and college level), the ball comes from below, and the pitch types — rise ball, drop ball, screwball — require different recognition and adjustment than anything a baseball hitter faces. A rise ball that looks strike-height out of the hand will be above the zone at the plate. A hitter trained purely on baseball mechanics won't be ready for that.

Ask the coach directly: how is hitting a fastpitch pitch different from hitting a baseball? A good answer addresses the pitch plane, pitch speed relative to distance, and how they teach hitters to read spin. If they brush off the question or say it's basically the same, keep looking.

2. What's Your Hitting Philosophy — and Can You Explain Why?

The debate between linear and rotational hitting has been going on in fastpitch forums for years. Some coaches swear by a compact A-to-B swing that prioritizes contact and bat path. Others emphasize hip rotation and driving through the ball for power. Both approaches have produced great hitters.

What matters isn't which camp the coach is in — it's whether they can explain their reasoning. Ask them: why do you teach it this way? What does this approach do well, and where does it have tradeoffs? A coach who can walk you through their thinking is a coach who actually understands what they're teaching.

Red flag: a coach who says 'this is the only correct way to hit' without being able to explain the mechanics behind it. Hitting is complex enough that any coach who claims certainty on every detail should be questioned.

3. Will You Work With My Daughter's Current Swing, or Rebuild It?

This is one of the most important and most overlooked questions. Some coaches walk into a first lesson and immediately want to change everything. Sometimes that's necessary. Most of the time, it's not — and a full rebuild takes months to produce results, meaning your daughter may struggle at the plate for a while before she gets better.

Ask the coach to describe their typical first lesson. Do they watch your daughter hit first and assess what's working? Or do they start correcting immediately? A good coach evaluates before they prescribe.

Also ask: what's your timeline for expecting improvement? If a coach can't give you a realistic picture of the development arc, they may not have coached enough players through the process to know. Families in fastpitch forums consistently mention coaches who changed a swing significantly and never communicated how long it would take to see results.

4. How Do You Teach Pitch Recognition and In-Game Approach?

A hitter who looks great off a tee and struggles in games is missing something — and it's usually pitch recognition and situational awareness. The best hitting coaches don't just build mechanics. They teach hitters how to think at the plate.

Ask the coach: do you work on reading pitches during lessons? Do you teach hitters when to be aggressive versus when to take? How do you prepare a hitter for two-strike situations?

Watch for coaches who work exclusively with a tee or a soft-toss machine. Those are valuable tools, but a hitter who never practices reading live pitching — real spin, real timing — is going to have an adjustment period every time they step in the box. The best instruction eventually involves live at-bats or at minimum pitching machine work set to vary speed and location.

5. How Do You Handle Slumps and the Mental Side of Hitting?

Hitting is the hardest thing to do consistently in softball. Every hitter goes through slumps — what separates good hitters from great ones is how they respond when things aren't working.

Ask the coach: when a player you work with goes into a slump, what's your process? Do you go back to fundamentals? Do you simplify the approach? Do you work on confidence and mindset alongside mechanics?

Coaches who only know how to add more drills when a hitter struggles can actually make slumps worse. Look for someone who understands that hitting struggles are often as much mental as mechanical — and who has a clear, calm approach for helping players find their way out.

This question also reveals a lot about temperament. A coach who gets frustrated or dismissive when talking about struggling hitters probably won't be patient enough in the moment.