Baseball Drills & Coaching Tips

Try these baseball coaching tips to help you assess your players. As a new baseball manager with a brand new group of kids I was trying to figure out positions that each child could play during the first couple of baseball practices.

I wanted to make practice fun but still be able to judge arm strength and velocity so I would know who could possibly pitch, make the long throw from 3rd to 1st and so on.

We call this baseball drill–Hitting the Target.
Take 25-30 balls and throw them on the ground at short.  Set up a net at first base to catch the balls and line the players up in 2 lines.  The object is to be the team to get the most balls into the net.

Have the kids run up and grab the baseball with a bare hand and make a good throw to first.  I also used this as a skills practice by not using the gloves which causes the kids to charge the ball and pick it up with the throwing hand and make a good step and throw that was hard and accurate.

It’s a great competition for the kids while teaching them baseball fundamentals and also allowed me to figure out what kids could play certain positions.

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These baseball drills for kids are ones that I have used for years.  The baseball drill, Soft Toss, improves your player’s eye hand coordination and Power is excellent for batting form.

Soft toss:
I have found that instead of just throwing one ball at a time, that if we throw one baseball on top of the other at the same time and then tell the player which ball to hit (top or bottom) ball, that hand/eye coordination is increased.
I also will take one ball and hold it above the players head (coaching 13 yr. olds). They will get in their “loaded” position and then I drop the ball at any given time. This seems to create “fast” hands and forces them to keep their hands inside the ball or “short” to the ball.

Power:
We take the tops of 5 tees out of the lower portion of the tee. We then placed “toilet plungers” (haha yeah, cheap toilet plungers) into the bottom part of the tee upside down. On the toilet plungers we place basketballs. (use old ones) Then practicing correct mechanics as we normally would off the tee, we just hit the basketballs into the nets.

This created good baseball hitting  form when making contact with the ball because of the weight they had to hit off the tee. It also created a strong swing while maintaining good mechanics.

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Try these warm up drills for baseball with your team. We call this baseball drill the Fire House Warm Up drill.  It is great for both quickly throwing, catching/receiving & running and works best with about 10 players.

Start by putting two players on the pitchers mound (#1 & #2).  Evenly distribute the remaining players at each of the 4 bases.  Have them form a line behind the first player at the base who is getting ready to receive a ball from the mound.

Start the ball with player #1 on the mound.  Have player #1 on the mound throw the baseball to the first person in line at any base.  Player #1 from the mound immediately runs to the end of the line at that base to which they just threw the ball.  The person who received the ball then immediately throws the ball back to the second player standing at the mound (now #1).  The player who just threw the ball back to the mound now races to the mound and gets ready to receive a ball next.

The now first player at the mound quickly throws the ball to a different base and runs to get in line at the base they just threw it to…..the cycle continues quickly with throwing, catching & running.

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We love to implement a baseball drill we call “Star Drill” in our practices.  These are excellent youth baseball drills to use throughout the year.  They are great drills to put “game like” pressures on the players, and it allows them to build cohesiveness and trust.

We have the players line-up at the tips of a pentagram (5-point star). The lines are equally placed approximately at the positions of Short Stop, 2nd Base, 1st Base, 3rd Base, and Catcher (home plate). We time the players each week to mark their improvement and error reduction to complete the drill. They have to catch the baseball and throw it to the next station and hustle to the end of that line or they might be in the middle of the next throw (incentive to hustle). The order of the stations are as follows: SS, 1B, 3B, 2B, Home, and back to SS.

The players must go through each station (star point) until the player that started the drill at SS catches the last ball at SS. With our team of about 20 players, we can get through this drill as fast as 90 seconds or as slow as 4 minutes. If a player misses the throw or drops a catch, he must hustle to get the baseball, without help from his teammates, get back to his position before he can throw the ball to the next station. If there is an errant throw, his teammates can “pick-him up” by digging the ball out of the dirt or jumping to catch it.

We do these baseball drills 2-5 times depending on how well we are achieving our goals from the drill. We keep track of the lowest errors and times of the season to compare each week our improvement.

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This is one of the baseball throwing drills we use.  I call this my three in one baseball drill. It is a fun way for the players to work on throwing, hitting the cut off, and hitting and running.

For a team of 12– break the players up into 4 teams of three, rotating throughout the game.

Three will be hitting and the rest will be in the field. No Pitcher. The baseball coach will pitch. Catcher does not need gear. Throw to the backstop. BP pitch speed

Each hitter starts with a 2 strike count. Fouls are strikes.

When the hitter puts the baseball in play he runs the bases without stopping in an attempt to reach home.

While he is running the players in the field must throw the ball into home from the position it was hit. The catcher throws to first, first to second, second to third, third to home in an attempt to beat the runner.

Balls to the outfield must also be thrown to home via cut-off man.

This drill stresses good accurate throws to each base as well as cut-off principles, as well as hitting and baserunning.

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