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Hitting instructor gets into the swing Baseball player follows dream to Nashville to teach his 'position' technique with training tool When Jaime Cevallos watches baseball, the "swing" is all he sees.
"I get excited when I see someone swing," he said.
And it's the "swing" off of which Cevallos has made a career. A trainer at Showtime Sports Academy in Franklin, Cevallos teaches batters how to improve their swing by teaching them how to get into certain key positions. This is a concept he had developed based on his own experience at batting.
Cevallos, who lives in Southeast Davidson County, discovered the concept of finding the best hitting positions while he was playing baseball at Mount St. Mary's University in Emmitsburg, Md.
"I earned a starting position in college due to my defense," he said. "My defense was what I was good at."
Cevallos said his hitting was "decent" in high school, but in college, he struggled with it.
During the last game of the 1996 season, one of the pitchers came up and said to him, "Don't worry about it; you're on the field for defense, not for offense."
Although it disappointed him to hear this, Cevallos saw that as an opportunity to improve.
"I cut out pictures from Sports Illustrated of hitters in their swing positions. I started to realize I was not getting in the same positions they were," he said. "I deduced at that time that is was changing my positions that would make me a better hitter."
Hence was born the concept of "position hitting," a phrase coined by Cevallos.
Cevallos said he spent the winter of '96 and '97 "in a dingy gym" working on his positions. He did it by swinging in front of a mirror and hitting off of a tee.
"That year in 1997, I became one of the most improved hitters in Division I history with 70 or more at-bats," Cevallos said.
Cevallos said he increased his average by 168 points and his slugging percentage by 312 points. "I earned first-team all-conference honors," he said. He also was offered a scholarship.
"But I didn't take it," he said about the scholarship. "I felt like I had accomplished what I wanted to accomplish. I realized it wasn't baseball that I loved; it was the improvement process."
Furthermore, Cevallos said, he wanted to help others realize they "could achieve the same success at the plate."
So from that point on, he set out to "learn about the baseball swing," a desire that grew almost into an obsession, he said.
In 2000, Cevallos volunteered to film the hitters for the Charleston River Dogs baseball club. He would film them and then view the different frames on a computer. "You could slow it down; stop it; reverse it," he said.
As he was filming the club's hitters, Cevallos learned that there are certain key positions that great hitters get into, that average hitters don't.
"I realized there are certain positions you must get into to hit with power and consistency," he said.
His next challenge was to find a way to teach players to get into these key positions.
In 2004, while coaching at the Miami Country Day School, Cevallos had the chance implement his strategy.
Later that year, he decided to come to Nashville to pursue his dream of instructing. He had heard that Nashville was hub for angel investors, people who invest in entrepreneurial ventures.
"I didn't know how I would do it," he said. Although this approach had existed in golf, it did not previously exist in baseball, he said.
But Cevallos persevered and now uses "The Tool Training Aid" at Showtime Sports Academy. "The Tool" is a special bat that is made from extra hard and heavy maple and has a shorter length and thicker handle. It is used to teach the "slot" position and other positions that follow.
Cevallos refers to himself as "The Swing Mechanic." He trains players from grade school to professional.
Taylor Dennis, a junior who plays on the Middle Tennessee State University baseball team, has been going through training with Cevallos for about eight weeks. He said the training has had "a profound effect."
"It has really helped me get my confidence back," he said. "I've seen results almost instantly."
Dennis has hit two home runs in scrimmages so far this season. He said was "not a home run hitter" in the past.
"Obviously, it's working," he said.
Jaime Cevallos, a baseball trainer at Showtime Sports Academy in Franklin, uses the formula F = MA or Force = Mass x Acceleration, to teach batters effective hitting.
"Instructors have stressed speed, because it is apparent," he said. But the "mass" part of the formula has been neglected, he said. And this is measured by impact.
"Impact is not the most important, but it is the most informative," he said. "Impact tells me how much mass was behind the hit."
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