Hitting help

Question
Hello,

My 12 year old son has been playing travel baseball in south Florida for about 3 years.  He loves playing the game.  He has a very strong arm, is very athletic, an excellent pitcher, catcher, and can play any position well.  The problem is he has never been able to hit the ball well - in games.
He has an excellent swing, does extremely well off T's and soft toss, and hits the ball as hard as anyone on the team.  However, when he faces good live pitchers, he seems to forget everything he's learned, or maybe somehow thinks what he works on so much when practicing hitting doesn抰 apply in games(?)  Give him an outside fastball, or curve or changeup (90% of the pitches), and he's done.  For the 3 years he has been playing travel ball he always has had the worst batting average on the team.  His swing is not the problem - it's that when he faces decent pitchers, he loses his fundamentals.  He starts moving too early, backs off the plate, pulls his front foot out, gets the long loopy swing, and he cannot put his stride foot back down in the same place.  I won't say we've tried EVERYTHING, but we sure have tried a lot of things for 3 straight years.  It seems he抯 done every drill in the book regularly over and over, including 搒wing against the fence?drill, soft toss from the side, underhand toss from the front, hitting off the T, live pitching with an L screen, pitching machine, using different instructors, etc., etc.., you name it.

What can he do mentally/physically during at-bats to make him concentrate on fundamentals (ie, shorten his swing) so he can consistently improve his batting average during games?  

Thanks,
Jeff

PS: We have our own batting cage, pitching machine, T, etc.

Answer
Hey Jeff,
My guess without seeing your son, is that he may be afraid of getting hit by the pitch. Does he hit well in the batting cage? Does he make good contact against adult pitching? Pitching that he is not afraid to bat against?
I can't really see the problem without seeing him hit..
Sorry..
Good Luck..
Dennis