Getting a rec team to hit

[bjenkins24]

U may be able to throw 32mph but it's easier to hit at full distance. The closer you are the less reaction time the girls have. Pitch it 10 to 15ft away. Make sure u are behind a screen. Also find some where that has a batting cage. You can have stations of front toss, live pitching (possibly from an older player) and tee work as well. But you need a cage or facility.
Run them all at the same time. If you can't have a live pither use a pitching machine.

I've heard this and this is what I do, but I swear it's not all about reaction time. I've hit at that distance someone throwing it slow. I swear it's just a different experience at the full distance at the full speed. Nothing to base that off of than just personal experience, but that feels right.

I'm coaching my 6 year old in a coach pitch baseball league. They let us throw from as far back or forward as we want. Most of the first year kids hit it way more often when I'm like 10 feet away from them. Reaction time would be tiny in those cases, but they do just fine. I dunno just my 2 cents. It feels like it has to be a different experience.

 

[ArmWhip]

The big difference between all the types of batting practice that you do, side/front toss, tee work, machines, and in-game hitting is the ball-strike factor. In practice/drills you can swing away, in games the brain needs time to assess the pitch before the swing-no swing decision is made. In practice there are no consequences, you can swing at everything, in games there is a choice, be it subconscious, that has to be made. There is no way to 'practice' in-game hitting, you have to create a game situation. You can't have your pitchers throwing every batter 10 pitches or give the batter 5 hits, it's not a game-like situation. I would split the team in two and scrimmage with live pitching, and someone calling balls and strikes. If a batter pops up on the first pitch, too bad, next batter up. Keep track of the score make it a competition.

 

[Strike2]

These pitchers are throwing 45-50 miles an hour. Without an arm circle I'm throwing 32 max. Yes I've clocked myself. Am I really that weak? Can coaches throw 45 mph without an arm circle? In our league one coach does an arm circle and hurls them in. No other coaches I've seen throw very fast other than him.

10U Rec throwing 50mph??? I seriously doubt it. Anyway...

For DD, I used a combination of T work, soft-toss, front-toss, and pitching machine. We'd spend an hour or more several times a week on it. Whatever she did during a team practice was extra. When I coached Rec, many moons ago, I did station and machine work with the team, but also worked with players in groups of 2-3, starting with the most promising.

In BP, pitch accuracy and consistency is more important than speed. If you suck with accuracy, practice. Put yourself at 15-20 feet. The shorter distance compensates for the slower pitch speed. Use your bad pitches to help teach some plate discipline and recognition of a good vs bad pitch. Develop hitting games...say five good hits before three outs. Start with a 1-1 count...a walk removes an out. Teach them what they should look for with a 0/1 strike count verses two strikes. Once they're striking it well, give them a scenario..."last inning, tie game, runner on first, one out".

Bottom line: You won't develop a team full of hitters with a couple of team practices each week, especially with all the defensive work you need to do. Those players doing work at home will progress faster, and some will never get it no matter what you do. If half your lineup can hit, and the other half at least knows when to keep the bat on their shoulder, you'll do fine.

 

[bjenkins24]

10U Rec throwing 50mph??? I seriously doubt it. Anyway...

For DD, I used a combination of T work, soft-toss, front-toss, and pitching machine. We'd spend an hour or more several times a week on it. Whatever she did during a team practice was extra. When I coached Rec, many moons ago, I did station and machine work with the team, but also worked with players in groups of 2-3, starting with the most promising.

In BP, pitch accuracy and consistency is more important than speed. If you suck with accuracy, practice. Put yourself at 15-20 feet. The shorter distance compensates for the slower pitch speed. Use your bad pitches to help teach some plate discipline and recognition of a good vs bad pitch. Develop hitting games...say five good hits before three outs. Start with a 1-1 count...a walk removes an out. Teach them what they should look for with a 0/1 strike count verses two strikes. Once they're striking it well, give them a scenario..."last inning, tie game, runner on first, one out".

Bottom line: You won't develop a team full of hitters with a couple of team practices each week, especially with all the defensive work you need to do. Those players doing work at home will progress faster, and some will never get it no matter what you do. If half your lineup can hit, and the other half at least knows when to keep the bat on their shoulder, you'll do fine.

I personally clocked 47, so that's all I can say for certain. That was the fastest pitcher in the league, but not by a ton. Everyone else was somewhat close. In our league pitchers start at 8u. There are a couple girls that played up and have been pitching since they were 6 and they hit puberty early. The one that threw 47 was 5'4 and had been pitching for 4 years.

Anyways we had half the team that could hit in the spring and the others just struck out. We have a pretty good rec league I think. The good pitchers average about 2 walks a game, so if the girls aren't battling at the plate they strike out. There was one team that I swear started out with a bad bottom of their lineup, but at the end of the season they all seemed to hit.

My team wasn't like that. We did machine, soft-toss, front-toss, tee work, wiffles, and heavies in about 6 stations all season and I swear no one got better. At least as far as hitting off a live pitcher, which we rarely did.

I asked the coach on that team what they did and he said he pitched fast to them full arm-circle. I dunno if that's what did it, or maybe they were already that good at the beginning of the season and I didn't notice or something. If I just pitch all practice, the rest of the practice will suck, and I would have to learn how to pitch correctly.

I usually do a ton of stations with a bunch of parents helping. But parents give almost no instruction and don't do the drills right, so I like not taking a station at all and making my rounds to different stations. I'm kinda tempted to hire some older pitcher to come and pitch for us half a practice at a station.

 

[Eric F]

As others have said...Front toss, from behind a screen, 15-20' from the plate is going to be your most effective BP work.

 

[chinamigarden]

Ok so assume practices are working and the kids are hitting in practice. The key to getting kids to hit in games is for coaches and parents to shut up and let them bat. Don’t tell them they swung at a bad pitch, don’t coach them when they are in the box… if you want to remind them of something do it quietly prior to the at bat. Then reward the effort, the results will follow.

 

[wheresmycar]

Back in 10u Rec days, I had a drill I called Skinny Bat. Many times we'd have access to two cages. Cage one is front toss or machine, then in cage two, we'd have them using the skinny bat, with plastic baseballs. I liked the smaller solid plastic baseballs. Solid balls fly truer than whiffle balls. Then I throw close front toss with the baseballs.

This drill accomplishes a lot....
1. Increased confidence. Every 10 year old initially thinks it will be impossible to hit a smaller baseball with this 1" diameter bat. But most of the time, they are crushing it by the end of their first session.
2. Bat Speed. This bat is only 12oz, and it is easy to swing hard. Many 10u girls have no concept how fast the bat speed should be.
3. Hand/Eye coordination.
4. It's fun. Every team I used this with loved it, and I was always asked, "are we doing skinny bat today?"

I am not a fan of live pitching in practice. It wastes a lot of practice time, with fewer reps, and not much results.


Sklz Quick Stik

 

[Bullseye]

I've done a couple seasons of coaching 10u rec and I'll be doing more in the fall. A lot of our practices are batting practice in stations, so getting in a lot of reps, but what seems to be the biggest issue is hitting against a live pitcher.

We were doing cages once a week, a lot of tee work, and soft/front toss, the girls hit fine in those situations, they hit at least, but against a live pitcher it's so hard. No one seems to hit. So I figured I would have our pitchers do some live pitching every practice, but the parents are against it and the kids are too. The pitchers feel like they are missing out on the rest of practice. Parents are worried about injuries (not sure why pitching 50 extra pitches a week will lead to an injury? But ok).

I wish I could pitch well enough that it would be like a live pitching situation, but I just can't. I feel like the girls on my team get better at fielding, I have a decent handle on that, but unfortunately if they don't hit the ball we don't win games. I almost feel like I should try to find some older girl and pay her to come pitch at practices.

Is there anything that anyone has found that can help girls improve hitting off live pitching that you can do in a season? I would love to see some improvement there at the end of the season, and I'm just not really seeing it.

They have to hit on their own.
Softball has homework.

 

[Eric F]

They have to hit on their own.
Softball has homework.

Only the ones that want to get better.

 

[bjenkins24]

I am not a fan of live pitching in practice. It wastes a lot of practice time, with fewer reps, and not much results.

Why does it waste time? One pitcher one batter, everyone else is off in other stations. 0 wasted time right? My issue with it is the pitchers hate it, otherwise I would do it every time.