Baseball Drills & Coaching Tips

This is one of the drills for coaching youth baseball that was sent to me by David, one of my readers.  Try this out with your team tonight!

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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I got the inspiration for this baseball coaching tip from one of my subscribers.  It includes some fresh ideas on baseball hitting drills.  Try it out and let me know what you think!

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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Are you looking for fresh ideas for baseball training drills?  You’ve come to the right place!  Try out this idea below and let me know how it goes for you.

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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Take a look at this submission from Bert.  Two great suggestions for baseball strength training that can be done at home and that can work with all age groups.

From Bert…
Simple and fun strength and coordination exercises to do at home. These two simple exercises, which can be performed at home, help address two of the areas Ted Williams preached were the most important when it comes to making consistent contact: wrist strength (for bat speed) and hand eye coordination. (Williams also preached hip rotation, but that was for power.)

Wrist strength exercise – Have the baseball player grip his favorite bat at the butt end, as he or she normally would when holding the bat. Start the exercise with the bat in the right hand, the arm fully extended, parallel to the ground and in front of the ballplayer, and holding the bat in the vertical position.  Keeping your shoulder and elbow still, slowly rotate the wrist to the right until the bat is horizontal (parallel to the ground) – do not allow the bat to go past horizontal. Now slowly rotate the wrist to the left until the bat is once again parallel to the ground on the other side (the bat movement will resemble that of a mechanical metronome). Start out with 3 sets of 3 (in each direction) with both the right and left hand. Work up to 3 sets of 10 with each hand. Also, increase the bat speed as the ballplayer’s strength allows.

Helpful Hints:
Before starting the exercise, take a few moments to –
Warm up wrists by simply shaking them gently and loosely for about 10-15 seconds. Warm up and stretch the shoulders and elbows. If the ballplayer finds the bat is too heavy to perform the exercise properly, choke up a bit.
After the strength exercise sets are completed, stretch the wrists by doing one more set, but this time, as the ballplayer brings the bat from the vertical position to the horizontal position, allow the bat to slowly pass below the horizontal position thereby gently stretching the wrist. Perform 1 set of 5 reps for both the right and left hand.

Hand-eye coordination exercise – Holding the bat with one hand (the power hand (right for righties, left for lefties) somewhere just below the middle of the barrel, bounce a ball on the sweet spot of the barrel (this baseball drill will also teach the ball player where the sweet spot is). Try to do this ten times without missing. Do three sets of ten (it will take several tries). It may be hard at first, but with practice the ballplayer will be able to do it relatively easily. This also helps discipline the ballplayer to try to watch the ball hit the bat.

Helpful hints:
It may be easier to start out holding the baseball bat with both hands, but eventually work back to one.  It is fun to have a contest at baseball practice to see who can bounce the ball the most times without missing.  Do this drill outside or indoors where you can’t break anything (the balls tend to fly around, especially at first)
You will see the results at batting practice and at the plate – quicker bat speed and more consistent contact.

Technorati Tags: baseball strength training, baseball, baseball drill, baseball practice

Last week, I sent out a request for my newsletter subscribers to send in their favorite free youth baseball drills.  Check out this one below (very creative!).

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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