If you’re looking to liven up your practices try these free baseball practice drills ideas. The Dead Ball drill is great when you are short on coaching staff and the outfield cut-off drill is a fast-paced drill that gets your players competitive juices flowing!
Dead Ball Drill
We use a drill called “Dead-ball drill” in our junor high practices. We began using it because for years there was only one coach, and running a baseball practice with one coach requires some drills that the players can do on their own.
With balls peppered around the perimeter between 3rd and 2nd base, the boys approach the balls one at a time with their glove and top hand down, pull it directly up to their stomach, stride twice and throw to first.
The 1st baseman dumps the balls into a bucket, and another 1st baseman carries it back to the left side of the infield when the rotations is over. 2 buckets, 20 balls moving around. The boys quickly caught on and actually began asking “can we do dead ball today?”
Outfield Cut-Off Drill
Have one player at short stop, one at second and the rest at either left or rightfield. Coach throws/hits the ball over left field’s head. They run out to get it, short stop goes out to relay ball in to second base. Then ball is thrown/hit out over rightfield’s head and second base goes out as the cut off while short stop covers second base.