Divide your baseball team into two groups. Put half of them at short stop and the other half at second base.

You will need four baseball coaches, adults, or older siblings, etc to make this work. You will need someone at first and third base. Take the other two adults and put them near the pitcher.

The adults then start throwing grounders to the players with just enough time for them to field and throw before another baseball comes for them. The balls do not go to the same place, leaving the kids to think on their feet and move quickly.

After three balls, the next player goes up and the fielder goes to the back of the line. The kids at 2nd will throw to 3rd and the players at short will throw to 1st.

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The first baseball drill is for working on line drives.  It goes as follows. I set up about 40 feet away with a tennis racket and bucket of tennis balls.  The boys line up and I will take them one at a time at any infield position and line five tennis balls at them and they compete with each other trying to go 5 for 5 in line drives.

The fear factor is not there since they are tennis balls and the difficulty level goes up as the balls will pop out if you don’t squeeze.  The boys really enjoy competing and trying to make spectacular plays.

At the end of baseball practice we will play a game of knockout. Have one player at first and a catcher, the rest of players lineup at the shortstop position hit ground balls to the shortstop position the player has to field the baseball and make a good throw to first base make a mistake and your out.

Then we will do a round of pop fly’s with a throw to the catcher they like the competition.

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This gives us the chance to rotate through all 5 of our pitchers so they aren’t throwing so much at practice just enough to stay in shape while saving plenty of arm for games. It also helps our outfielders be ready to play wherever they need to & we have two sets of infielders when its all said & done.

Once a week we have a baseball practice dedicated to batting where we work with them on swing mechanics. At these practices we have 3 or 4 of the boy’s dads come out, myself & the dads & our pitcher’s pitch to the boy’s. It gives them a chance to get a look at all kinds of pitches. Since we started doing this we have boys who couldn’t touch the ball before and are now nailing it into the outfield on all kinds of pitches.

Another thing I did is to draw dime sized spots on tennis balls and have them swing for the spot. We do this at our indoor practices with a 360 degree tee. we use tennis balls for indoor fielding drills. They bounce a lot more than a baseball & they are more difficult to catch. Once we have done this, baseballs stick to our players gloves like they’ve been tarred because the boys are used to catching the baseball’s bouncy cousin, the tennis ball.

A side bonus to this–if you want to get your younger players more interested in practice have their dads get involved on the days we do this. The parents pretty much have to drag their kids away from practice & everybody knows that a kid who wants to be at practice will learn twice as much as a kid who doesn’t.

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With twelve players here is how it works:
1.  Nine players are in the field taking their normal positions
2.  3 batters are in the dugout ready to hit.
3.  The batter comes to the plate and hit’s off of the baseball coach who is pitching.
4.  The batter puts the baseball in play and if he reaches base safely then he stays at that base and the next hitter swings away.
5.  If the batter gets out then he runs to the dugout to get his mitt and goes to the field right field.
6. The fielders then rotate in this manner RF goes to CF, CF goes to LF, LF goes to 3B, 3B goes to SS, SS goes to 2B,  2B goes to 1B, 1B goes to the pitchers mound and the pitcher goes behind the plate to catch, the catcher becomes the third batter.
7.  If there is a player on base and he is out on a fielder’s choice hit by another player then the player who hit the ball is out.
8.  The hitters continue to hit until someone gets them out so there is incentive to focus on both batting and fielding.

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Whoever each player threw with in warm ups is their partner for “Stick It”.  The object of this is to make accurate, catchable throws.  The balls start on one side, and all partner teams throw at the same time.  The baseball must be thrown and caught by each partner.

The catch is, when you catch the ball, you have to have one foot stuck to the ground at all times.  The person catching can choose which foot.  So, you can’t jump to catch the ball or move the foot that is stuck. If you do, your team is out.  After throws are made, one side of the players moves back and you throw again.  That same side continues to move back until someone wins.

When throwing, you can move both feet, crow hop, etc, do whatever you need to do to make an accurate throw, but the receiver may not move that one foot when catching the ball.  If they don’t catch the ball, but it lands close enough for them to reach for it without moving that foot, we count that.

This baseball drill makes for some funny times!!

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Station one is hitting off the Tee into the fence.  A baseball coach will place balls on the Tee and the batter will continually hit off the Tee while the coach is giving technique advice.

The second station the player will go to is the pitching machine where a coach will send baseballs at the batter where they will continually hit to another player who is shagging them back to the coach.

The third station is a Shortstop ground ball to second base and then a throw to first.  The players line up at shortstop and I send one to first base and one to second base.  I then hit a ground ball to the short stop and after they field it they throw it to the second baseman and the second baseman then throws it to the first baseman.

All players then round robin the positions until they switch with the batting drills.  The hour, hour and a half practice seems to hit all the basics.

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Have your  team split up evenly and have you assistant baseball coach take half the team.
Have each half line up in single file about 30 yards in front of you.
Have one player step about 10 yard in front of the others.
The coaches will either roll a ground ball, throw a line drive or a pop up.

As the player fields the baseball the coaches run to a different spot so that the player has to field the ball and square up to the coach and having to judge the distant to make a good throw.  The coach can run all around the player and even make the player have to adjust their throw by going further back or closer to the player.

Then you just repeat the process for the rest of the team!!  It’s a great baseball drill and is a lot of fun!!

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Split your baseball team into 2 equal groups.  Have one group at home plate ready to run the bases and the second group at third base with their ball gloves.

Place 5 baseballs an equal distance apart between third base and the pitching rubber.
The baseball coach will stand at second base ready to catch the balls.  On the coach’s command the drill will start.
The first player in the line up at home will run from home plate to second as fast as he can.
The first player in the line up at third will scoop one ball up at a time throwing it to the coach on second making hard and accurate throws.
If the thrower gets all five balls to the coach before the runner reaches second that team will get one point and visa versa if the runner beats the thrower.

The drill keeps going until both teams have ran the bases and had a chance to throw to second.  After the drill is completed add up the points and the one with the least amount will have to run a lap or pick up the equipment (coach’s choice).

With the younger players you may want to use one or two less balls or put them closer together.

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This gives the fielders some experience every time the ball is tossed to the batter and the batter gets a chance to hit a ball from the pitcher.  We pitch about 10 pitches to each child then we have them run the base on the last hit.

Seems to keep their interest a bit longer but you know 5 and 6 year olds – hard to keep their interest!

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Young kids 8-11.  Divide the players into three 4 man squads.
They rotate coming to bat, hitting to three outs, scoring runs.
When three outs, kids go to field, fielders shift, one group comes to bat.

Basically it is a three part inning baseball game. They can be competitive, work on infield situations, get lots of batting and running practice.  I usually coach pitch but sprinkle in my pitchers for some work if I have the bodies.

You can also do two 6 man teams with no outfield.  Hit to OF is a double unless they are thrown out.

To me young kids need the infield and hitting work most, outfield third which I try to work into a different baseball drill.

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