Over the years, we have been seeing certain tendencies with infielders that we believe are created by the typical pre-season training that goes on indoors in the northeast. One such tendency is for good athletic infielders staying back on ground balls and taking ground balls on their heels with their hands under their butts, instead of out in front of themselves. In most cases the root cause of that action is fear on the part of the player. It comes from all of those hardwood grounders that the coaches hit as they try to unsuccessfully simulate an outdoor environment as well as the desire to try to simulate game conditions. What better way to “simulate” game time conditions than to hit absolute screaming, vicious rockets right at the player, indoors, on hardwood? Something that their player “might” see 2 or 3 times a week – maybe. Now, it would be one thing if the coach were using a quality safety ball, like the ones that Baden Baseball manufactures. Their SAF-00 ball has a real leather cover and weighs close to a regular baseball. On hardwood the ball will show a higher bounce factor than on turf. On turf or grass it has a real good resemblance of a “routine bounce” for the player and most of all, very little, or no pain if you mishandle the “screecher”. Every coach has he own beliefs and style to coaching fundamentals and if hitting liners at the feet of your infielders off of hardwood with regular baseballs, is the method you use, then lets help the player keep his head down and through the grounder by reducing the pain factor…especially with the young players! Nevertheless the real goal is, or should be, to get the young players to “come to and get through the ball, don’t sit back on your heels”.
So how could we develop a better approach to the ball, or at the very least, a method that may help the player know when to come to it and when to “sit and wait”?
Like all coaches, when hitting prolonged infield, whether to one player or the whole infield, you try to hit varied grounders. We always attack the seven (7) angles and that goes a long way in developing good approaches to the baseball as well as quick feet. Often times we won’t use a fungo; we’ll just roll them out from short distances at the perfect speed and angle to get the job done correctly with high repetition and in the shortest amount of time. We think that gets the job done from the repetition standpoint for sure.
However, like everything else with this game, the anticipation and ultimately the reaction to what we see, often times separates the good player from the best. We try to give our infielders, regardless of their position and place in the starting lineup, an advantage as to whether they should charge the ball or sit and wait, so we have come up with a BP and pre-game mental drill to play to get better at charging or “sitting”.
The baseline within the baseline: If we take line marker and marked our field as we normally do, we would have our 1st and 3rd baselines. Those lines are on every field that we play on and whether they are Little League or College, they never change, they may just be longer. But now what we’d like for you to do is draw a baseline between 1st and 2nd and 2nd and 3rd. Now think, from your own past experiences (and here is where being a student of the game-day conditions you play under comes into play), if you have had one week of solid rain and your field is wet and soft, and a ball was hit and the FIRST time it hit the ground was on the home plate side of that line, would you charge…or sit? Remember, it has rained for a better part of the week, or (as we know it up here in the Northeast, it’s June and we still have snow in the dead-ball territories), would you charge or sit? You’d come to the ball-you’d charge it. Now what if it is the 2nd or 3rd week in July and we haven’t had any rain in 3 weeks and that same scenario is played? Is that imaginary line as far out as it was in the first few wet weeks of June? Not even close. That imaginary line could easily be moved toward home plate by at least 45 feet, half a base path! Any ball that touches the ground on the outfield side of that imaginary line for the first time, means you probably should “sit” like Rin-Tin-Tin. Remember in this game the operative word here and in just about everything that we do in baseball, is the word “probably”; nothing is absolute.
When we see our infielders just barely getting runners out at 1st base early in the season and on a regular basis, the first thing we talk about is, where is that line between 1st and 2nd and 2nd and 3rd, in their eye/mind? Is it even set up to recognize? How do we get them to react to what they see and therefore know when to be aggressive and when to “sit” and relax, so they are not encouraging the other team to run as hard as they can because they may beat, not so much a weak throw, as much as late anticipation and recognition to the grounder by not paying attention to where the ball FIRST hit the ground!
BP and Pre-Game are Critical: Now the key to this visualization is not so much trying to “guess” where this imaginary line resides, but to know within +/- 3 feet where it would be. How and when would we do that? During batting practice and pre-game of course! What we’ll learn in BP and pre-game is that more often than not the line resides between 45 and 75 feet from home plate…weather conditions dependant. By the way, these conditions will change during the game…especially double headers. The moist, damp ground that started off a 10AM double header is now rock hard by 2 PM start for game two. That means everything relative to charging and sitting has changed; even on a well manicured field.
Again, the line has been drawn mentally for each infield position. So what is really the first indicator that we have to react to? It’s the down-angle of the ball immediately off the bat. This is where contact is made for each infield position across the plate. Ever want to scream when your shortstop sits back on a high bounder, waiting, waiting for it to come down because he’s caught in the in-between hop. When the ball finally lands, he’s catching it at his knees and throwing flat-footed, at best, with the runner past the bag. He’s been waiting for the ball to be hit without zeroing in on the hitting area and seeing where the ball hits the ground for the first time. If the first time the ball hit the ground and it was on the home plate side of that imaginary line, he’d be standing under the first bounce and would throw the runner out by a bunch. Happens all the time. What about our approach to the seven angles to a ground ball? Knowing where that line resides is the difference between taking a path to the outfield to get a ground ball versus a lateral direction to that same ball.
In the infield time is really important. But in the infield we do have the capability of controlling the amount of time we have to throw someone out. It just takes a little practice; ya know, like everyday, a hundred times a day…if you’re lazy.
So, the effort is well worth taking in order to get your infielders to gain time and balance and accuracy on their throws. So much of this game is played between the ears and in the mind that creating another thing to visualize early in their career eventually will become second nature and truly improve their defense and consistency in making routine outs, because they will be “creating” more routine outs with their approach to the ball.
More about anticipation in the hitting area for infielders in future articles.
So how could we develop a better approach to the ball, or at the very least, a method that may help the player know when to come to it and when to “sit and wait”?
Like all coaches, when hitting prolonged infield, whether to one player or the whole infield, you try to hit varied grounders. We always attack the seven (7) angles and that goes a long way in developing good approaches to the baseball as well as quick feet. Often times we won’t use a fungo; we’ll just roll them out from short distances at the perfect speed and angle to get the job done correctly with high repetition and in the shortest amount of time. We think that gets the job done from the repetition standpoint for sure.
However, like everything else with this game, the anticipation and ultimately the reaction to what we see, often times separates the good player from the best. We try to give our infielders, regardless of their position and place in the starting lineup, an advantage as to whether they should charge the ball or sit and wait, so we have come up with a BP and pre-game mental drill to play to get better at charging or “sitting”.
The baseline within the baseline: If we take line marker and marked our field as we normally do, we would have our 1st and 3rd baselines. Those lines are on every field that we play on and whether they are Little League or College, they never change, they may just be longer. But now what we’d like for you to do is draw a baseline between 1st and 2nd and 2nd and 3rd. Now think, from your own past experiences (and here is where being a student of the game-day conditions you play under comes into play), if you have had one week of solid rain and your field is wet and soft, and a ball was hit and the FIRST time it hit the ground was on the home plate side of that line, would you charge…or sit? Remember, it has rained for a better part of the week, or (as we know it up here in the Northeast, it’s June and we still have snow in the dead-ball territories), would you charge or sit? You’d come to the ball-you’d charge it. Now what if it is the 2nd or 3rd week in July and we haven’t had any rain in 3 weeks and that same scenario is played? Is that imaginary line as far out as it was in the first few wet weeks of June? Not even close. That imaginary line could easily be moved toward home plate by at least 45 feet, half a base path! Any ball that touches the ground on the outfield side of that imaginary line for the first time, means you probably should “sit” like Rin-Tin-Tin. Remember in this game the operative word here and in just about everything that we do in baseball, is the word “probably”; nothing is absolute.
When we see our infielders just barely getting runners out at 1st base early in the season and on a regular basis, the first thing we talk about is, where is that line between 1st and 2nd and 2nd and 3rd, in their eye/mind? Is it even set up to recognize? How do we get them to react to what they see and therefore know when to be aggressive and when to “sit” and relax, so they are not encouraging the other team to run as hard as they can because they may beat, not so much a weak throw, as much as late anticipation and recognition to the grounder by not paying attention to where the ball FIRST hit the ground!
BP and Pre-Game are Critical: Now the key to this visualization is not so much trying to “guess” where this imaginary line resides, but to know within +/- 3 feet where it would be. How and when would we do that? During batting practice and pre-game of course! What we’ll learn in BP and pre-game is that more often than not the line resides between 45 and 75 feet from home plate…weather conditions dependant. By the way, these conditions will change during the game…especially double headers. The moist, damp ground that started off a 10AM double header is now rock hard by 2 PM start for game two. That means everything relative to charging and sitting has changed; even on a well manicured field.
Again, the line has been drawn mentally for each infield position. So what is really the first indicator that we have to react to? It’s the down-angle of the ball immediately off the bat. This is where contact is made for each infield position across the plate. Ever want to scream when your shortstop sits back on a high bounder, waiting, waiting for it to come down because he’s caught in the in-between hop. When the ball finally lands, he’s catching it at his knees and throwing flat-footed, at best, with the runner past the bag. He’s been waiting for the ball to be hit without zeroing in on the hitting area and seeing where the ball hits the ground for the first time. If the first time the ball hit the ground and it was on the home plate side of that imaginary line, he’d be standing under the first bounce and would throw the runner out by a bunch. Happens all the time. What about our approach to the seven angles to a ground ball? Knowing where that line resides is the difference between taking a path to the outfield to get a ground ball versus a lateral direction to that same ball.
In the infield time is really important. But in the infield we do have the capability of controlling the amount of time we have to throw someone out. It just takes a little practice; ya know, like everyday, a hundred times a day…if you’re lazy.
So, the effort is well worth taking in order to get your infielders to gain time and balance and accuracy on their throws. So much of this game is played between the ears and in the mind that creating another thing to visualize early in their career eventually will become second nature and truly improve their defense and consistency in making routine outs, because they will be “creating” more routine outs with their approach to the ball.
More about anticipation in the hitting area for infielders in future articles.
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