If you’re looking for some excellent pitching drills for your younger players, give these two a try. They provide quick improvements and the kids have fun with them while getting great conditioning.
Feed the Gorilla
Here’s a fun pitching drill it’s called feed the gorilla.
You get two pitchers to double up as a team.
You need a bucket of baseballs. Here’s how it works:
Coach stands 40ft back to catch balls.
One player has a bucket of balls and tosses them to pitcher.
Pitcher throws all balls to coach (feed the Gorilla).
During the pitches the coach observe’s arm rotation, foot work, and balance of pitcher.
Cool thing about this drill–you can get your player to throw 20 or 30 balls and have fun while getting good conditioning. The player should not stop until he has thrown all the balls in bucket.
Water Bottle Slam
Another drill that we do with our pitchers is at the last few minutes of practice.
We set a 2 liter of water bottle on top of a bucket on home plate and have them try to knock it off. We then move the bottle to inside & outside and we keep a running number of points. It makes it a game and they love the last 10 minutes of pitching practice. PLUS you see them really getting better control of the ball.