That scares the hell out of me. Have you done this?
Oh yes. It was taught to me when I was a kid in my last year of little league. I went from a 0.0xx hitter to 0.200 over night. Had the family not moved to the boonies, I might have actually done something with baseball.
Later, I have coached the neighbor’s kid and he has the same issue. First he was too late with his swing. Then after getting yelled at, he just started taking pitches. Took him a little to un-learn the “keep your eye on the ball” but after about the 5th batting practice, he started to pick it up. I also had to untrain some other bad habits such as foot placement, stance and not crossing his hands but now he is a solid .275, sometimes .300 hitter. Now if I could just get his swing speed up.
I set the training up in different sessions. In all the sessions there was a cone at the short top position. In session one, they stood just outside the batting box and watched the cone. Another coach (parent) would watch the batter’s face to make sure they were keeping their eyes on the cone. Throw about 10 and then give the kid a break, repeat about 3 times each kid.
Session two is the same but this time just standing in the batters box in the hitting position - no swinging
Session three is the “bump” session. The idea is to bump the ball if they think it is in the strike zone. A bump is to swing but hold the bat at the plate and contact with the ball is not needed. Feed back on the ball being a strike or not is important on this step. Don’t use the term strike or ball. Tell the batter “in” or “out”. Don’t yell or say things like you should have or other words... just tell them “in” or “out”.
Session four is a full swing actually trying to hit. This is where they are actually trying to hit the ball. they don’t need speed or power in the swing, just make contact with the ball.
All the pitches up to this point should try to be strikes. Session five starts to add some outside / inside / high / low pitches to help train when NOT to swing.
I know it is scary from the coaching perspective as it goes against all that we have been taught. But it works. It will take a non-hitter and give them the speed of decision making to swing or not .... without them having to think about their hitting.
For the little ones, we even taught them to sing a ditty “Just a little Apple I’m going to splat. Here is the handle here is the bat”. Sing it to I’m a little tea pot. This will help them develop the rhythm of their swing. It also helps them to focus and ignore distractions.
One thing you could try, take your worst two or three hitters and work with them to see if it helps.
Only one disclaimer. It does not work for everyone. It does seem to work for those that do not respond to classic batting training methods.