From Valara…
I have two baseball coaching tips for you.

1.  For pitchers to work on pivoting and stepping correctly I line them up and have them pretend they have a ball.  They start in their pitching stance and work on the pitching step and pivot from home plate to the fence and back.  If they are doing it correctly it will look like a snake in the ground.  If not it will be straight lines.  It is repetition for them and helpful to me as a baseball coach.

2.  Runner on 1st and 3rd.  If they catch on to us doing the fake throw to 2nd base, I have the short stop come up a little.  Then I have the catcher throw to short stop and then they can look at 3rd or throw back home to get the out there.  This works amazingly.  They think it is going to the pitcher because of shorter throw….sometimes we even get the out from home to 2nd as well.

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From Robert…
Here’s a baseball batting drill that I use:
Equipment:
3 different sizes of 1” PVC pipe (I coach 10U team so I have 26”, 28”, & a 30” pipes)
Bucket of golf ball size wiffle balls
Bucket of baseball size wiffle balls

Drill:
Using the pipes as bats, I have them start trying to hit the golf ball wiffle balls as many times as they can.  I vary from tossing it from the side, just behind them, and also from the front.

This can be a very frustrating baseball drill so I like to show them how much they are improving by first tossing a few of the baseball size wiffle balls to let them see how they are striking them and then again after the drill and they can usually see a substantial increase in not just the number of hits, but also how much more centered they are hitting them.

Then they end up wanting to do the drill more.

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From Traci…
Don’t know where this baseball drill came from, but it is a great way to end baseball practice:  Seven Innings

Players are in their defensive positions.  You play a defensive game of seven innings with thebaseball coach Fungo batting.

Coach hits the baseball and the players play it as though it is a game.  Once the players get 3 outs, you move to the next inning.  You can create different situations and players must keep track of imaginary runners and know the situations.  Great for communication too, because they must call out situations, outs, etc.

If you have more than one player for different positions, they can switch each inning.  For each run scored against them, they jog the bases as a cool down to end practice.

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From Jewell
Tee Ball Ages 4-5: Kids brand new to tee ball - who have never played and don’t have older siblings they watched play baseball  - don’t know the concept of the baseball field and/or bases.

To illustrate this, you can use poster board and a marker and draw a baseball diamond…and further illustrate home base (with a drawing of a house AND/or the tee, ball, bat, etc.).

Draw and label first base with “1.”
Draw and label second base with “2.”
Draw and label third base with “3.”

* Most 4-5 year-olds know their basic shapes (circle, square, triangle, DIAMOND, rectangle, oval, star, and heart).  Likewise most 4-5 year-olds know how to count and recognize the numbers 1-10.

After making the drawing and explaining it, you can physically walk the team around the field and show them each base.  You may also want to bring cones or some type of visual item labeled with a “1,” “2,” and “3″ (even an old small doll house for home base) to assist visual learners.

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From Joe…
This is a baseball drill I use to get all my players to try out the infield positions:

Have a player at each infield position. The rest of the players line up down the third base line (hopefully not too many). Put an empty bucket in foul territory by third base.

I hit a ground ball to the shortstop and he turns two. The first baseman then makes the throw across the diamond to the third baseman. The third baseman must straddle the bag and make the “V” tag. He tosses the baseball into the bucket at third and hustles to short. The shortstop moves to second and the second baseman goes to first. The first baseman jogs behind the backstop and goes to the end of the line at third.

We make a game of it to see how many times we can be perfect. It gives everyone a taste of each position. We also can switch up how starts the double play (second to short, or first to second to first then the throw to third). Start slow and emphasize proper technique for each position.

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From Joyce…
I have one, but I received this idea from somewhere else. I don’t remember where. It has been working pretty good for me though. It’s called framing the pitch.  It’s for a little more advanced baseball catcher, but the idea is placed on how to catch the pitch to make it appear as a strike, even when it’s not.

If a pitch comes in too high, turn the open part of the glove downwards so you are catching the top of the baseball. This still gives the impression that the “ball” is still within the strike zone. Then if it’s too low, turn your glove upwards to catch the bottom of the ball. It’s the same for the inside pitch, turn the open part of the glove toward the batter to catch the right side of the ball, and if it’s an outside pitch, turn the open part of the glove away from the batter to catch the ball on the left side of the ball.

A lot of times the ump is looking at where the pitched ball is caught to determine if it’s a ball or strike, especially those “close ones”. Catching in this manner gives the appearance of catching the pitch within the strike zone, therefore more strikes are called.

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From TJ…
The towel drill (hitting)

This baseball drill is used to help keep a hitter from uppercutting and force him to take a shorter, more compact swing.

Place a towel under the batter’s front elbow and have him take swing against live pitching. If he swings correctly, the towel will not fall to the ground because the elbow will pull down, forcing the hands down and making them quicker through the strike zone. If the batter uppercuts, the front elbow will fly upward and the towel will fall. This baseball drill can be used in all types of batting practice.

Don’t use this drill too much because it shortens the arc of the swing out in front where you want extension. Use this primarily for hitter who chicken wings the lead arm.

From Tom…
Here is a good drill for hitters to get the feel for a proper swing motion.  Simple yet very effective for young players especially.  Frisbee throw.  Yes, that’s it.  Just have them throw a frisbee - correctly of course - with their lead hand (left for right handed hitters) and (right for left handed hitters).

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From John…
I feel the same about same old same old baseball practice…things like cover home plate just doesn’t motivate a pitcher to run and cover home plate after the pitch, when there is a runner at third.

Kids react and respond better and quicker when I shout out an easy Spanish word that grabs their attention. For example, when the opposing baseball team has a runner on third and leads off the bag I shout out “plancha“.  The pitcher instantly runs to cover home plate, the catcher positions himself in the catch and throw stance, third baseman knows to run parallel with the runner, shortstop covers third base.

One of two things happen–the runner panics and quickly returns to the base or keeps running because he sees the third baseman running beside him.  If this happens I have the catcher sell the throw to the shortstop covering third and and third baseman stop and drop; if the runner commits to run the catcher can easily run towards him and apply the tag.

•  first the Spanish word is a simple catchy phrase that is for word association only
•  second the third baseman must take off with the runner to distract him
•  third the catcher must keep the ball in the mitt, but convince the runner he made a strong throw to third.

This baseball play typically works once in a game, after that they don’t attempt a steal home.  I always say keep it fun, keep it simple.

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From Doug…
I coach Boys 14-16 years and this is one baseball drill that they enjoy and ask for all the time.

Have a full fielding baseball team in place.  Batters take turn hitting a medium speed pitch, sometimes pitching from the coaches.  After the ball is hit anywhere in the field, the players must  throw the ball to first base and continue to throw to 2nd, 3rd, and then home while the hitter has started running immediately after contacting the ball.

The idea is to beat the throw to home before the batter has rounded all the bases.  A great drill for all ages.

From Jason…
While taking batting practice either with a coach pitching or a machine, give each kid on the team 5 swings.

You start with a certain amount of pushups.  For every time they hit it up the middle at the pitcher or the machine its minus 1 or whatever amount you want.  At the end their will be a certain amount of pushups to do.  Really teaches kids to think up the middle.

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From Sonny…
Every baseball team has a few ‘class clowns’.  During our pitch and catch warm up drill, we have one that will purposefully throw a wild pitch one that could not possibly be caught.

This happens repeatedly, so now each baseball pitch that he throws errantly he has to run and chase.  We even went one better in that each errant pitch anyone throws he has to chase.

However, there is a catch; to keep everyone else from purposefully throwing errant pitches, if anyone throws 2 errant pitches they basically become ‘it’.  Then they have to chase balls for a while.

This helps them concentrate on making good throws and not just randomly playing ‘pitch and catch’.

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