Soft hands versus pushing through ball on fielding grounders

[FPMark]

Saw a video where Ozzie Smith taught his method of fielding grounders. It was very interesting. I have used his method to teach my DD.

He says to flex your wrist back and put fingertips on the ground. when the ball hits the glove, flip wrist up and towrds you while bringing the glove up to your waist. The flip is meant to keep the ball in front of you if it is miss handled while also presenting it to the right hand in the palm of the glove. Not really soft hands or push through approch, but the glove does go through the ball. He says never close the glove except to make a tag.

 

[coach_jeffobi]

I've always taught, and been taught to "keep arms flexed, hands soft, and just keep good vision on the ball and field it/move through it closest to glove foot." I think as long as those fundamentals are stressed then the errors will go away on their own with increased hand eye coordination/confidence. Which means a lot of rolled, skipped, THEN batted ground balls.

 

[LAdad]

In this video, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVOPt303vro Candrea briefly talks (at 10:40) about fielding short hops in front of you, without bringing them in. He still refers to it as "soft hands", meaning don't stiffen the arm.

 

[Mr T]

@ dragon and possibly helpful to others: search for Justin Stone on YouTube. He's a coach for the White Sox I believe. I personally agree with his method.

You want soft hands in that soft for me means relaxed. To funnel or not to funnel is a different issue. Hands become hard when 1) elbow locks, 2) elbow contacts body (I believe Candrea talks about this too), or 3) arm goes too far towards throwing hand side.

I believe in "scooping" as it was called in this thread, but with the wrist not the forearm as Stone demonstrates. And in baseball you don't want to catch it deep in the pocket.