From Maury…
One of my favourite baseball drills is the Bucket Drill.  It’s really easy and it teaches kids to hit a target.

You get one baseball player to sit on a bucket; you can set the distance based on the age group.

Have a line of kids ready to receive grounders.
I tend to use cones for this one.
I’ll set up a pair of cones for the starting line and a pair of cones where I want the players to move to when they receive the grounder.
It instills moving to the ball instead of waiting for the ball to come to you.

Once the player receives the grounder he needs to make a throw to the person sitting on the bucket.
If you miss no point.
If the person needs to reach for the ball 1 point.
If you can hit the head or chest as a target and the player on the bucket does not need to move–5 points.

On a hot day I will reward a Slurpy to the top three.  It’s simple and easy and the kids like it.

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Towel Drill, by Thomas Spilker (Fort Worth Bronco Baseball Head Coach)
Intent – improve baseball throwing accuracy; improve hand eye coordination, improve ball handling skill, & increase team spirit
Equipment  – 2 hand towels (these are the targets)
Setup – tie the towels onto a backstop (same height and about 15 feet apart)

Break the players into 2 groups (count off 1 – 2; 1 – 2; 1 – 2, and so on)
Mark two lines – equal distance form the towel (targets), players can not cross this line or it’s a no throw …

Each team begins at the same time and then plays at their own pace. First play throws at the towel – a hit counts as 1 point. The play that just threw retrieves the baseball (regardless of point of not) and MUST get it to the next player with an underhand toss.

The first team to hit their towel (target) 5 times wins the round. Play for the best 2 out of 3 rounds.
Players yell out HIT!!! For each scoring throw and keep the their own score count. Baseball coaches and parents can play.

This is a lot of fun and the players love it. Vary the distance and towel size as desired. Let the players decide how fast to go but encourage “slow is fast”.

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From Paul…
With young baseball pitchers, I watch their balance and mechanics to start.  I start with the full wind up to help them understand the tempo necessary to throw strikes. The rock step, bringing the leg to your body with a pause to gain your balance, the stride toward the plate, the arm angle, the release, and the follow through to a balanced position to get ready to field your position. Too many kids forget they are a  baseball fielder in this position as well as a thrower.

I progressively get the baseball drill faster until the motion becomes second nature to the player and they can throw strikes consistently. Once I feel comfortable they have the balance down, we then incorporate fielding bunts and driblers down the line at full speed so the player can understand he has to go right or left or get ready for line drives.

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From David…
I coach modified baseball in my school district. One of the toughest skills for my pitchers and first basemen to master has been picking off the runner from first base.  We would practice the traditional way - with a pitcher on the mound, a first baseman, and a runner - but it has never really panned out.

About 3 yrs ago I decided to come up with a new baseball drill to practice this skill.  When we finish our long toss, I bring each pair of players back to a starting distance of about 20-25 ft.  While one line of players remains stationary I have the remaining line across from them move one player over to their left so that the original starting pairs are ‘offset’ in a diagonal line similar to the configuration from the pitcher’s mound to 1B.

The drill begins with all of the baseballs with the players in the same side of the formation.  I then go over throwing from the stretch - explaining that not all of the players may be pitchers but for this drill we need an equal number of pitchers and first basemen.  I start with the pitchers facing home plate and then walk them through the motion - coming set and then looking over to 1B without moving their upper body.  Once they’ve checked out the runner, I have them turn and throw to the first baseman (his partner from the long toss).  We practice both stepping off the rubber and quickly pivoting to throw to
1B.  Their target is the first baseman’s knee closest to the base.

Once the first basemen receive the throw, they become pitchers.  They face CF and we repeat the drill.  We usually do this so that each pitcher makes 5-10 throws to 1B.  We started practicing the pick-off this way and I immediately noticed that my pitchers were able to keep opposing runners much closer to 1B - in fact so close that some teams stopped trying to run on us.  In one game, the other team threw to first probably 15 times through the entire 7 inning game to no avail.  We were
safe every time and successfully stole 5 or 6 bases.  Their runners stayed pretty close to first, only attempted to steal twice, and - the ONLY time we threw to first WE PICKED THE BASE RUNNER OFF!

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From Tom…
Here is my very best baseball coaching tip. I was tired of having my players watch the third strike. I noticed that my more aggressive batters never got to the third strike.

Time to change the rules: I told my players at the beginning of the baseball tournament–You can not have a first strike called looking. If a batter did, the entire team would have to run 60′ for each and every called first strike at the end of the game.

The first game we only had 3 batters get caught looking. The entire team led by the baseball coaches sprinted around from home to third. The rest of the tournament we only had 1 called first strike. The players cheered each other on and went up to the plate looking for that first swing (hit) with aggression in their hearts. The baseball pitchers obliged us by throwing 80% first strike pitches. Even a ground ball or a strikeout that wasn’t a first pitch looking was viewed as a success by the team and reinforced positive behavior. The team raised their batting average by 100 points and we made the semi’s.

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From Brenda…
A baseball drill that I like to run works on throwing and catching and running the bases.

You place a baseball player on every base including home and you have one runner. When you say “go” the runner tries to run the bases and to beat the ball back to home plate before the throwers get it around the bases.

The throwers must tag the base before throwing to the next base so that a bad throw or missed ball must be brought to the base before thrown to the next base. Also, if the runner misses a base he must go back and tag it before continuing.

This baseball baserunning drill is a fun competition. You can also decide if you would like to allow backups for the base players or if they must chase the ball down themselves and run it back. You can have several runners and several groups of throwers and switch after each turn.  Have fun!

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From Don…
This is not a baseball drill as much as a game that our baseball team plays at the end of practice that the kids love and it serves as a very good practice drill for fielding grounders.

We call it ” king of the hill“

We have an indoor facility where the nonbatting cage portion of the facility is a little larger than the size of an infield. We split the team into two groups and have one group on each end of the facility going width-wise.

We put cones out as the outside barriers and put another cone in the middle of the facility. We then play an elimination game where a player is eliminated from the game whenever they miss a grounder.

We encourage them to throw the balls to one another as hard as possible but it must bounce before the middle cone to be fair. A player is also eliminated when the throw is “out of bounds”. As players get eliminated there is more ground to cover for the remaining players. We start out 5 on 5 and usually wind up 2 or 3 on 1. We try to be fair as to how much ground one player is expected to cover as to where we allow the ball to be thrown to.

This game teaches teamwork as well as going to both the forehand and the backhand as the players will cheer for their teammates after they are eliminated. we usually play 2 out of 3 to determine the winning team and let everybody play as much as possible each time.

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From Jeff…
Here is a baseball drill we use at most of our baseball practices.

Range Drill - Bucket at 2nd, Bucket at 1B, Fungo at Home

Fielders line up at 3B.

First baseball hit right at 3rd base spot.  Fielder fields it, throws to 2B and takes off running towards 2B.

Next ball hit to SS area - fielder fields hit toss to 2b, keeps going.

3rd ball hit to 2B area- fielder throws to 1B and keeps going.

4th and last ball it to 1B.

If you miss a ball keep going around the horn for the other balls - do not stop.

Goals:  Fielder fields ball on the run - encourage diving for balls - increase range of fielder.
Keep them on the dirt with good angles to the next batted ball

Variations:
Play consecutive balls got too, 9-12 in a row without counting the first one…depends on the number of fielders.

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From Ryan…
This is a baseball drill I use at every other practice:

1. Start with only the infield on the field, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, Shortstop, and Catcher
2. All other players’ lineup in foul territory off of 3rd base
3. Coach hits the ball to the Shortstop who fields the baseball and makes the throw to 1st, 1st then throws to 2nd, 2nd to 3rd, 3rd to catcher
4. During this process, each position follows his/her throw i.e. Short becomes 1st, 1st becomes 2nd, 2nd becomes 3rd, and 3rd becomes catcher, catcher goes to the end of the line.
5. A player in waiting becomes Shortstop and the process starts all over again.

If a player fails to make the fielding play or the throw to the other position, he then goes to the end of the line of players waiting.

This is a very fast paced baseball fielding drill and works on making fielding plays and throws to positions

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From Anthony…
This is a baseball drill to develop soft hands for infielders, pitchers and catchers, but especially middle infielders and turning the double play.

A baseball coach kneels on the infield grass with a bucket of baseballs in front of the shortstop and the shortstop has no glove. The rest of the infield is in position with gloves on. The baseball coach will roll a ball to either the second base or third base side. The shortstop fields and then will say flip or toss to the 2nd or 3rd baseman who then completes the double play.

We use all the Double Play possibilities when working 1st base, 3rd base, catcher and pitcher as the start point.

From John…
One thing that my 9 and 10 year olds are enjoying is that the 2 best efforts given by my boys are allowed to be the captain for the 15 minute scrimmage at the end of practice that they can make longer if they choose.  The captains get to choose their teams and set their defense and batting order.  This has helped get a little extra focus from the boys.  They do realize that it isn’t always the best couple of kids, it is based on effort.

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