Why Your Kid Keeps Popping Up — and Why "Stop Uppercutting" Backfires
There are few things more maddening to watch than a kid who keeps skying weak pop-ups to the infield. And I get why everyone — the stands, the dugout, me too, once upon a time — yells "stop uppercutting, stay on top of the ball!" It feels right. It's also, for most young hitters, exactly the wrong fix. So let's get into what actually causes a pop-up, and why the obvious cure usually makes it worse.
What a pop-up actually is
A pop-up is really a contact-point problem: the barrel catches the lower half of the ball and sends it straight up with backspin and almost no carry. The further under the ball you make contact, the higher and weaker the result. So the question isn't "why is my kid swinging up?" — it's "why is the barrel arriving under the ball?" Those sound like the same thing. They're not, and that little confusion is where most of the bad advice comes from.
The myth: "swing down / stay on top"
Telling a hitter to chop down or stay level sure seems like the logical opposite of popping up. The problem is that a good swing isn't level or downward at all — it matches the slight upward plane of the incoming pitch. As Elite Baseball Performance explains, a downward or overly level bat path actually decreases the time the bat and ball share a plane — so the hitter is now more likely to clip the top (grounders) or catch the bottom (pop-ups). Which is the irony: "swing down to stop popping up" tends to produce more mishits, not fewer.
Coaches at Hitting Performance Lab make the same distinction: the goal is a slight, controlled upward path — not a chop, and not an exaggerated uppercut.
The real causes (fix these, not the symptom)
| Root cause | What's happening |
|---|---|
| Dropping the back shoulder | The shoulder dives down (instead of rotating), tilting the swing into a steep uppercut so the barrel slides under the ball |
| Casting / barrel under | The hands push the barrel out and down early, leaving the back shoulder too soon and arriving beneath the ball |
| Lunging forward | Weight drifts onto the front foot early, the head drops, and the swing plane tilts up |
| Contact point too deep | Meeting the ball too far back, before the barrel has leveled into the zone |
The most common of these in youth players is the back shoulder. As NTX Swing Lab notes, many 7–12 year-olds show an exaggerated uppercut before they've built the strength and rotational control to turn properly. The cue that matters: the back shoulder should turn, not drop.
How to spot which cause on video
Film from the side, chest height, about 10–12 feet away, and look at three checkpoints:
- Back shoulder at launch: does it rotate level, or dive downward toward the back hip?
- Head and weight at contact: stacked and balanced, or lunged out over the front foot with the head dropping?
- Barrel into the zone: does it level off behind the ball, or stay tilted up and arrive underneath?
I'll be honest: this is almost impossible to judge in real time — the whole thing happens in a fraction of a second. Slow-motion video is what makes it obvious, and looking at the same frames every time keeps you honest about which cause you're actually dealing with. You can do that with a coach, any slow-mo app, or — fair warning, this is the app I build — Angular Baseball, which traces the shoulder and bat path for you.
Drills for each cause
Back shoulder turns, not drops
Tee work with a focus on rotating the back shoulder through the ball while keeping the head level. Cue "turn the chest," not "drop and lift." 3 rounds of 8.
Stay back / no-lunge
Hit off a tee from a slightly wider, balanced stance with a quieter stride, keeping weight centered until rotation. Stops the head from diving. 2 sets of 10.
Out-front contact
Move the tee slightly forward so the hitter has to let the barrel level into the zone and catch the ball out front rather than deep. 3 rounds of 8.
Top-hand release feel
Light dry swings focusing on the barrel staying behind the hands and leveling late — this fights the early cast that drops the barrel under. (We cover this in depth in fixing casting.)
A quick word on "launch angle"
Launch angle is everywhere in adult hitting circles these days, and I'd gently steer clear of chasing a number with a 10-year-old. In my experience it just encourages the exact exaggerated uppercut that causes the pop-ups and the swing-and-miss in the first place. For young players, the priority is boring-but-solid mechanics: a slight upward path, a shoulder that turns, balanced contact out front. The line drives — and yes, the launch angle — come out of that, not the other way around.