Solid Tips for Parents Who Want to Coach Baseball

Just because the season is over it doesn’t mean that you have to stop coaching your children through their baseball games. Sure, it won’t be in any official capacity, but when you have a child who’s loving baseball or football or basketball, or you want to make sure that they are having as much fun as possible while they’re playing. It’s really easy for children to become despondent when they…

Hi everyone considering the summer time is normally a time that you side back and enjoy the heat and relaxation that comes along with it, I find it is time that I have difficulty ramping down. I always feel as though I am pushing, pulling, and driving myself to go further. 

Consider the fact that I am always working on something that I feel is important building lists of things to do and trying to stick to goals that I set out for myself. This is the first summer I have had off without baseball as a consistent presence in my life. I thought it would be easy to keep my mind occupied without it in my summer. The joy that I got out of helping and coaching Legion Baseball was immense. 

One of the biggest joys that comes out of it is talking, and thinking about the previous games or looking forward to a rivalry that is coming up. Who is pitching, who is hot, how can we improve. I always enjoy that aspect of the game. 

Hitting: Goal again was to learn more about the act of hitting and try to convey that to players. My biggest problem is that I wasn't creative enough with my hitting drills. I did a couple of different drills but I want to make sure that I switch it up for the players. Make sure we also get into a routine in terms of getting swings. This was my biggest let down in terms of what I was hoping to accomplish with the players this season. I don’t think I got player nearly enough swings to help them improve their skills. I do feel as though when they did get cuts they were quality but I focused on game situations live pitching, and off-speed pitches. So I guess in once sense I did help my players improve. 

Fielding: My goal was to get back into the nitty gritty and re-teach players how to field from the bottom up. I feel as though after I got through to players what I needed to get done, I wanted to make sure that they executed correctly on the baseball field. The way I view it is players need to be trained how to field, it isn’t something that should just be expected from them. 

My goal as a coach is to teach players the correct way to play any game which I am coaching. In terms of baseball I get back to basics with any group I am coaching. This began this past week with ground ball foundations. Players I find assume that they know exactly how everything should be done in terms of fielding these. 

I try to get players to buy in to the fact that they need to go back to the foundations in order to develop advancement of these skills. Love the following video in terms of breaking down ground balls to the basics:

I feel that players are never truly taught the correct way to do certain things on a baseball field and coaches often times just assume that they know how to handle a certain skills. Which is how bad habits are formed. 

One new piece of information I took from the video is how players should field the ball going toward first base. Almost like waiting for it. 

Momentum toward first. Coaching Points:

5 Cones- Players should field ball 95% of the time between 1-3

Pinky to the sky

Throw hand to the side as if you were playing patty cake.

Head down. 

Last thing I have seen from player:

Players knees collapse- Most definitely the worst mistake.

Head not down- Another problem. Work slowly on this. On going issue.

Unsure of glove hand placement- Not flat, ball creeps under glove. 

Momentum not going directly toward first- New skill not worried long term issue. 

I might be so impartial but this is a sweet swing...

Thought of the day goes out to a thought I had the other day. Simply put: Does playing baseball at a higher level (college, minors) necessarily make you a better coach?

I know that ideas will vary hugely on this topic in terms of the idea of having played the game vs. managing the game. I am not sure where I fall on this. I have seen plenty of good coaches who have been player and this has been a huge trend lately in MLB (Ausmus, Matheny, Ventura, etc.) 

But I have also seen some players who think that because they know the game they must be respected. The biggest thing that playing the game brings you is instant credibility. You can simply point to the fact that you did or played this certain way. 

Not having played at a higher level is a tough one to sell. To me though this does not discourage the idea of having immediate respect. You just need to be smart about how you approach your team. You might not be able to say you did this a certain way but you can say that you have seen coaches, and teams handle these situations this particular way. Which can also be important for players to see.