Practiced all Winter: Play same Teams, Hitting Down

[Screwball]

I just read in SI that Yogi Bera thinks that underhand toss does not help hitters. I was thinking he was referring to pregame 'show' warm-up they do in pro baseball. I
assume they have a pitching machine inside somewhere, where they hit before games.

Nolan Ryan has his team hitting off live pitchers last few years in practice (not pregame of course), that I know from SI, too.

Girls on the team I know practiced all winter, 2 hours on Sundays, hardly any time off, mostly soft toss and tee work, with 2 rounds in with machines at the end. Team average is down 50 points this season I was told, even though some of the teams are the same played in the fall.....

Makes you wonder why you practice so hard for no results. What gives? (I know the answer about hitting every day, but some of the girls had been doing that in the fall and stopped, due to schoolwork, distractions, illness, injury, other sports etc. So let's take that out as an answer. There were other team practices during the week; pitchers were really busy.)

 

[softballphreak]

What kind of soft toss? Front toss or side toss? Long tee or tee into a net? How many games have you played since Winter?

 

[Amy in AZ.]

I guess I would question whomever is teaching the hitting. And are you working with each individual girl to improve certain aspects of her swing? Are you watching video of them and then, showing them how to improve?

I never ever teach hitting using a pitching machine. If I came in to help, that would be the first change I would make. I am so against them, that it seems to me that you did a lot of things right and then, erased them by having the girls hit off a machine.

 

[Wellphyt]

IMO side toss and pitching machines are counter productive. Tee work can help when learning new movements. Front toss is ok when space is limited. IMO there is no substitute for live pitching.

Our High School team last year did mostly tee work and front soft toss. Very little live hitting. They hit terrible. They had no sense of timing when they hit in games.

 

[quincy]

One of the things I have noticed is that when players are in a controlled environment, tee, soft toss, machine, it is very easy to over coach them.

If you are practicing all Winter, each individual player should have a plan on what to work on that all the coaches understand. If a Player is constantly getting different advice from different coaches, the winter practice will actually hurt the Player.

 

[InsidePitch]

This sounds like us. We did the same routine and ended up with the same results. DD went from .400+ last fall to .222 current season. She did not move up, still loves the game but can't hit out of the infield now. Same for the rest of the team. The last few tournaments we've won or lost by one run several times. Seems everything we do is into a net so the girls never get to see what the end result of the swing is. I have mentioned this to the coach but have been brushed aside so I let it go. The coaches are getting frustrated with the girls and the girls get worse. I suspect now its a combination of bad mechanics and psyche.

 

[Amy in AZ.]

Get rid of the nets and order 2 dozen of the small Total Control Balls, 1 dozen of their whiffles and 1 dozen of their golf balls. Cut out as many home plates as you need, out of cardboard or bath mats,and get some tape to put the batters box down on the floor or dirt.

Then, anyone can throw front toss to the girls. You do need to be able to protect yourself, a little bit - but it isn't like having a softball hit at you. I wear a facemask, because I image that the "golf balls" could bruise my face. I have to throw the golf balls to the hitters like a dart. I don't know what anyone else is doing.

If you have not been putting down a home plate and a batters box, the girls will struggle to know where to stand in a game. I know my DD high school coach never used a home plate, for the drills. It is simple to do and helps give the girls that visual.

 

[Ken Krause]

I've really come to dislike side toss. Most times the tosser doesn't do it right, so you get little popup-type tosses which encourage hitters to drop their back shoulders down early and hit up. If you have any hitters who manage to hit over a pop-up screen despite being three feet away from it you know what I'm talking about.

I'm fairly well convinced that using it before games has hurt a few of our players. We didn't do any during the winter, but put it into the pregame routine so they're hitting something besides wiffle balls. But rather than preparing the girls, I think it's creating some bad habits. We hit well the first couple of tournaments, but not so much in the last one with weaker pitching. I'm going to try using a tee instead at that station so they can take a better bat path.

Hitting is so much about timing. Even an ugly swing can produce good results if it's timed properly. Front toss from a short distance (10-15 feet away, from behind a net), wiffle balls, TCB balls, bouncing racquetballs or tennis balls, anything that requires a rhythm to hit. I like to mix in a pitching machine too, so they have to track pitches over a distance. But not a steady diet of the machine, especially if you don't have anyone who can feed it properly. (A parent or coach who shows the ball, then slowly takes the ball down, fumbles at the opening and then finally shoves the ball in is doing you and your team no favors. They have to bring it down so the arm speed pretty much matches the pitch speed to be of value.)

 

[starsnuffer]

If all the work was on machines and side toss, then never could those batters faced someone trying to force them to fail, IE strike them out. In real games, the pitcher is not throwing "strikes" but rather are trying to throw "strike outs". There is a HUGE HUGE difference between the art of batting and the skill of hitting. Far too many coaches/instructors spend the majority of an athletes time on teaching the perfect swing. This is much easier for them to do due to the wealth of information available, video analysis, and because tom, dick, and harry down the street do it too.

Instead, shift the focus to 25% "batting" and 75% "hitting" and get the kids in front of someone trying to force them to fail. Live pitching is great, but even a coach behind a screen is good. TCB balls front toss can be thrown to various spots to see what the kid can really do with inside/outiside/high/low pitches.

Using T's or side toss before a game is of limited value. If the athlete doesn't have their swing down by game time, they're not suddenly going to improve. Instead, focus simply on seeing the ball and hitting the ball hard. A bucket full of TCB balls, while heavy, is much easier to cart around then a net, a bunch of T's, and various other contraptions that do no real good, and unlike whiffels, can actually be used in the wind.

-W

 

[InsidePitch]

Ken, with the machine two balls are better....LOL. One to hold up and bring down, the other at the opening ready to drop in.