10u hitting faster pitchers

DD is 2nd year 10u. What ive noticed is the better teams handle hitting the faster pitchers. Some of the girls on DD's new team are struggling with the faster girls. These girls hammer the ball in batting practice and against slower pitchers. I'm a assistant coach on the team and looking for ideas to get the girls acclimated to the speed. Any ideas?

Our 10u girls last year took a ton of hitting off tees, soft toss and from machines at high speeds. A ton. It didn't work. This year we're doing a lot more live pitching and hitting.

Interesting. I thought the machine with hi speed would have helped. That was something I was looking to use. When you do live pitching do you use your pitchers?

You would be better off finding an older pitcher to help a practice.

Might be they are starting thier swing too late, depending on machine and how you use it it might be hard for them to get thier timing down.

With good mechanics, adjusting to faster or slower speeds is simply a matter of timing.

I'll bet money the hitters are waiting to see if the pitched ball is going to be a strike or a ball. Against faster pitching that's not going to work. There's also bad swing mechanics......

I set up a screen 15-20' from HP and pitch to our hitters. I use the complete arm motion. The closer distance allows me to have more control and replicates a quicker pitch. We went through the same issue and doing this helped big time. As said already timing is the key if the mechanics are there.

catmaster said:

Interesting. I thought the machine with hi speed would have helped. That was something I was looking to use. When you do live pitching do you use your pitchers?

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Problem with machines were they were coming in at the same spot so after a couple pitches the girls would get the timing AND location down. Then you put them in a game and the ball is moving inside, outside, up and down. BTW, we are using our own pitchers.

I do believe its all in the timing. I like the idea of pitching full motion from a close distance. I typically do the live pitching for the team but I can't replicate or throw like a real pitcher. Are there any drills or any thing else I can do to improve timing?

At 10u, to prepare for Nationals (and faster pitching) we did a variation of the "Barry Bonds" drill with the pitching machine in the cages at 50mph where the batter starts are 35 feet and she hits a "fair" ball, she moved 3 feet up to the pitching machine. If she hit it "fair" again she moved up another another 3 feet, if she fouled off the pitch, she stayed where she was, if she swung and missed, she moved back 3 feet (but never farther than 35 feet back). Some of our players could get within 15 feet of the pitching machine. I don't know the reaction time from 15 feet and 50mph, probably equivalent of a 100 mph pitch in baseball?. What I liked about this drill was that when they moved back to the normal 35 feet distance, the pitch seemed slow and easier to hit.

With that said, I am not a huge fan of pitching machines, most wheeled machines pitch the ball with perfect backspin (with little movement) and to the same location most of the time. I don't think most teams do enough live pitching and that is where most of the hitting practice should be.