Batting cage advice (as a team)

I coach a 10u rec team. Actually through a series of events we are playing in a 12u league which is new for all of my girls. It's fall ball so the pitching we've faced is all over the board but some of the opposing pitchers are pretty good. Last week I was chatting with the opposing coach before the game and he told me one of his girls throws 50mph. Not sure how accurate that is but 9-10 year olds were basically frozen with their bat on their shoulders. If/when they decided to swing they were waaaay behind.

Some of it is a matter of simply swinging harder/faster. Some of it is proper mechanics so they take a direct path and reducing time to impact. We've worked on that. But mostly it's learning to load up for each pitch because, the way it is now, by the time they decide they want to swing at a pitch it's too late. I have tried explaining this but it hasn't been clicking. My best pitcher is too wild to get my batters quality BP so I'd like to take a trip to to the batting cages.

OK, on to my question. For those of you who have taken your team to the cages, how do you approach it? The local facility charges $120/hour which includes one cage with a softball pitching machine and one cage with no machine (although I think I could negotiate use of their baseball pitching machine cage).

Here's my general plan... let me know how you went about it.

I'm going to make it optional. Tell parents time and place and explain cost will depend on turnout (rsvp ahead of time). 11 girls all at once seems like a recipe for chaos since there will be too much standing around so perhaps I assign 30 minute blocks?

Would love insights or best practices from anyone who has done this.

Thank you.

Your local facility is expensive - $120 would cover 2 cages with machines in both in our neck of the woods - would def try to negotiate that down - if you have two cages but only one with machine you can have coach pitch on one (set up screen very close ) and I would do two groups 30 minutes each - you need 4 coaches and discipline - two working the cage with machine and 2 the soft toss - one coach feeds the other coach reviews with batter what they did right wrong and ensures next girl is ready and that group is ready to shag - same thing on the other side - one coach pitch and the other giving instruction after each kids turn - you can do above with one whole group but it depends how much room around cages there is

If you can get ONE cage for 2 hrs for 120 and get 3 kids for 30 minutes it is a better optio n - my two cents I'm sure there's other ways to go about it


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Have you ever watched batting practice before a Major League game? They're like 5 swings and they rotate. There's usually a group of 4-5, and they all hit a few times.

Maybe something like that could work. Have a group of 5, give them a small number of swings, then rotate. This keeps the other girls ready since their turn is coming up. You also keep them from getting tired from too many swings in a row.

I don't think this would work with 11 though, so maybe two half hour blocks like you said.

It has been awhile since I have seen 10U REC, but my thoughts would be to get two cages without a pitching machine and do front toss instead. Teaches the players to adjust to speed AND pitch location, and should save you some money on the cage rental. I have seen a lot of "cage hitting phenoms" who can wear out a pitching machine but freeze up vs. live pitching.

There was a recent post about pitching machine vs front toss. https://www.discussfastpitch.com/softball-hitting-practical/32585-buying-pitching-machine.html
I mention it because there were a lot of good comments about how you can use front toss to simulate faster pitching more realistically than a machine.

At 10U, I think you've hit the nail on the head. It's about their load sequence and anticipating on 'every' pitch. The GO GO GO and GO GO NO approach is great with this age. You can simulate this perfectly with front toss. Pitch them balls and strikes and the key is to be ready on every pitch (they should be at to touch) and then decide at the last second to swing or not.

Regarding cage, that A LOT of money here as well. Cages run $35-45/hr.

We used to bring in 3-4 girls in 20-30 minute time slots and have the cage for 1.5 hrs.. No need for the whole team to be standing around.

DD plays 10U rec. There are 10 girls on the team. Coach sets up a two-hour block in the cages, which he divides into 15-minute increments. Up to two girls sign up for each time slot. One girl will do tee work with one coach, the other one goes to the machine with another coach. At the halfway point, they switch. If any girl wants more work, she can stick around and take another turn when it's available.

For the first cage session of the year, though, coach went with 20-minute increments because he knew some of the girls would need some time to get used to the pitching machine. It was an adjustment for girls who never saw a pitching machine before.

We rent a basketball gym that has two rather long tunnels that drop from the ceiling. We get it for TWO hours for about $120, which is a little better than your deal. Here's how we use it:

Hour 1
Tunnel 1 is pitching machine. Tunnel 2 is split in half (two stations hitting from the middle in opposite directions, screen in between) one half is front toss and one half is tee swings into "space" (vs. into a Bownet) with a focus on high/low in/out results. We also have stations (depending on the number of girls) in the open part of the gym including a tee/Bownet station and a bunting station. Girls rotate through. In an hour they get a good workout with a good amount of variety.

Hour 2
We keep Tunnel 1 with the machine and turn Tunnel 2 into live pitch. We use the extra space in the gym to warm pitchers up (an also give them another day to throw whether they throw live or not. Sometimes some infielders will take grounders or throw a bit...

For variety's sake this winter, I'm thinking about running a hitting league for part of the two hours. Haven't done that in a while but I think some additional challenge/focus could be good. We basically use this setup almost year-round, including in the warm months because we get so much more work done than hitting on a field. Girls are hitting for almost the full two hours, there are not "slots" or "dead times" (though things slow down in the second half but that's ok because the live hitting becomes competitive and we can all talk hitting. This is for 18U but I don't think it's age-dependent.

Thank you everyone! This has been very helpful.

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Definitely shop around, seems expensive. I can normally get a tunnel with Jugs machine for about $25/half hour, $40 or $45 per hour.

time slots definitely a good idea, so no one is standing around too much.

also, if doing tee work, you can many times have several tees in one tunnel going sideways. can have say 4 girls doing tee work (each station working on something specific, ie trunk rotation, front arm, back arm, etc.), one in cage, and when bucket of ball is done in cage, everyone cleans up, rotates.