Vanity: Little League Coaches Batting Gurus

Dariusbane | 2 April 13 | Dariusbane

[DariusBane]

I coach 11 U Baseball. My team, like most in this age group just can't hit. We do fine against pitchers that don't throw strikes. If they throw strikes we don't hit. Usually without even swinging. These guys hit in practice and in the cage. But in games they go down just looking. How to get them swinging in games?

Little help please?

[Vendome]

Thatz Nutz! LOL

[EQAndyBuzz]

Double Dutch is a jump rope thing. Two people swing jump ropes and a person is in the middle jumping. Look at the you tube video of Double Dutch. Coaching baseball in th inner city, I had some girls from the local junior high school come in to work with my kids.

Also did it with my hockey teams. My players laughed at me until 3 young African American girls ran circles around them. By the third week, my kids were doing tricks and stuff. We would do it in the parking lot while warming up for games and the other team thought we were nuts.

[RoadieFan]

One thing that isn’t taught much anymore is to throw your hands AT the ball. that bat will follow through. this makes it far easier to hit the ball. My son learned that...and has been the leading hitter on his teams ever since.

Also, they shouldn’t swing for the fences, they should TRY to hit ground balls, make the defense WORK.

My son’s first coach made kids that struck out looking, run a mile for each time. It ended that activity IMMEDIATELY.

You have ZERO chance of getting a hit if you don’t swing.

Another thing that cured my son’s fear of fastballs, was playing short stop. i used to take him out on the UNEVEN rough infields after practice, and hit line drives at him. You never knew where they would jump. He learned to block them with his body, and lost his fear of getting hit.

[ex-snook]

Well the beginners in our LL had the rule no walks. You had to hit to get on. Then for the regular LL, I had the on deck batter watch and swing at every pitch. Worked great for us - others ???

[Salvavida]

Circuit courses in your practice. Set up the following circuits: 1- for outfielders: pop-ups and grounders to hit the cut-off 2- infielders: ground balls, lots of them, and throw to first (balls come from a batter at the plate) 3- batting: need a lot of balls, but have an adult on one knee to the opposite side of the hitter (R or L), flipping a ball to a hitter facing a fence-- the hitter drives the ball into the fence (this is for checking mechanics). 4- batting: once done wearing out the fence, the batter goes to the plate with a 1 and 1 count: no hit, go back to the fence; if he hits, he gets to go back in the on-deck circle to have another chance at the plate (you'll have at least two-three hitters to work with, one at the plate, one in the on-deck circle) and another in the hole

Rotate the outfielders/infielders as needed.

[Yudan]

Baseball is a game of repetition and routine.

STRUCTURE your practices and enlist parents that are willing to help. Divide the kids up so that EVERYBODY is in as close to constant motion as possible.

Split the team into batting practice groups of about 4... Say, group 1 is in the cage while group 2 fields grounders on the infield and group 3 works on outfield skills. Rotate them. And make sure they get REPS REPS REPS.

As they become accustomed to the structure, start increasing the pace and even the intensity. The idea being you want the games to seem slow compared to the work they do in practice. What this will do is enable them to play with a lot of confidence.

Before you know it, you’ll be having to hold them back. I applied these principles to a 13-14 YO rec ball team last year and saw them go 11-1.

I then did it with a 13-14 all star team and after 2 weeks of practice, we were playing well enough to beat AA-level competitive ball teams.

[perez24]

True...even Little League has pitch counts!!!!