Youth baseball lack of fundamentals & basics

[MrCrowesGarden]

I thought I read an article a few years ago that said it was actually good?

I think Haltz was referring to the "throw a baseball from the outfield into a trash can behind home plate" drill.

[cardsfansince82]

The hardest part will be finding someone with a VCR.

[Farewell Friends]

I thought I read an article a few years ago that said it was actually good?

I think Haltz was referring to the "throw a baseball from the outfield into a trash can behind home plate" drill.

I'm such an idiot.

I believe you can get them on DVD now, at least that was the case as of three years ago.

[Michael]

Don't almost all old men complain about fundamentals of the current generation? I remember Bill James writing an article about this phenomenon.

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

A guy I work with has a 6 year old son. The guy coaches his daughter's softball team but not the baseball team. Anyway, he's shown me videos of what the coach of the baseball team is teaching for hitting mechanics. And, it is atrocious. It's a mix of chopping a tree and a slap bunt. All hands. No weight transfer. A completely jacked up swing path. Etc.

So, my coworker talked to the coach and basically said that he's sapping all the power with that swing approach and it's not fundamentally even close to correct. The coach's response was the power would come as they grew and he wanted them to get used to making contact at all costs....which is stupid. There's no way to generate power with a bad swing. And, there's nothing wrong with sacraficing 'some' contact for a sound approach.

[tlombard]

A guy I work with has a 6 year old son. The guy coaches his daughter's softball team but not the baseball team. Anyway, he's shown me videos of what the coach of the baseball team is teaching for hitting mechanics. And, it is atrocious. It's a mix of chopping a tree and a slap bunt. All hands. No weight transfer. A completely jacked up swing path. Etc.

So, my coworker talked to the coach and basically said that he's sapping all the power with that swing approach and it's not fundamentally even close to correct. The coach's response was the power would come as they grew and he wanted them to get used to making contact at all costs....which is stupid. There's no way to generate power with a bad swing. And, there's nothing wrong with sacraficing 'some' contact for a sound approach.

That reminds me of the basketball coach that Malcolm Gladwell raved about in one of his most recent books. He said the guy was a genius because he took a team of girls who didn't know the fundamentals of the game and turned them into a winner. The problem I have is that he didn't teach them any fundamentals. He taught a team of ten year old girls how to run a full court press the entire game and basically be just jerks. They still didn't know how to dribble or shoot, they just ran a press so that they got enough turnovers to overcome their lack of fundamentals. Horrible way to teach and coach 10 year old kids if you ask me. As soon as the other teams learn the fundamentals better, they won't win another game. Sometimes it's better to take your lumps now to learn things right so you can be successful later. It sounds to me like the coach above is trading future success and enjoyment for a short term gain. It may work for a couple of years until other teams learn how to play defense but a team of slap hitters will eventually get their butts kicked when every one of them is slapping the ball to third for easy force outs even if the first two batters reach!

[Diddy]

A guy I work with has a 6 year old son. The guy coaches his daughter's softball team but not the baseball team. Anyway, he's shown me videos of what the coach of the baseball team is teaching for hitting mechanics. And, it is atrocious. It's a mix of chopping a tree and a slap bunt. All hands. No weight transfer. A completely jacked up swing path. Etc.

So, my coworker talked to the coach and basically said that he's sapping all the power with that swing approach and it's not fundamentally even close to correct. The coach's response was the power would come as they grew and he wanted them to get used to making contact at all costs....which is stupid. There's no way to generate power with a bad swing. And, there's nothing wrong with sacraficing 'some' contact for a sound approach.

How do you teach a 6 year old to swing? I'll probably still post in the thread I started earlier in the year. You can tell them something 100 times and every time they act like it's the first time they have heard it. There is certainly not one thing that fits all kids. I'm not agreeing with the coach just saying that in my one season of experience six year olds are hard to coach.

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

A guy I work with has a 6 year old son. The guy coaches his daughter's softball team but not the baseball team. Anyway, he's shown me videos of what the coach of the baseball team is teaching for hitting mechanics. And, it is atrocious. It's a mix of chopping a tree and a slap bunt. All hands. No weight transfer. A completely jacked up swing path. Etc.

So, my coworker talked to the coach and basically said that he's sapping all the power with that swing approach and it's not fundamentally even close to correct. The coach's response was the power would come as they grew and he wanted them to get used to making contact at all costs....which is stupid. There's no way to generate power with a bad swing. And, there's nothing wrong with sacraficing 'some' contact for a sound approach.

How do you teach a 6 year old to swing? I'll probably still post in the thread I started earlier in the year. You can tell them something 100 times and every time they act like it's the first time they have heard it. There is certainly not one thing that fits all kids. I'm not agreeing with the coach just saying that in my one season of experience six year olds are hard to coach.

I don't know as I've never done it, but he's got videos of him in a cage taking the bat from his shoulder to his earloab then kind of slapping away. Very weird.

[cardinalkarp]

I picked up a pretty cool baseball tool when Sports Authority was going out of business that has some really cool features on it that would be great for coaches teaching some swinging fundamentals.

It's called the Easton Blast, and is basically a swing analyzer. The small device fits on the knob of the bat and you record your swings in the cage (and it's done through an app on your phone) and it will track bat speed, path to the baseball, time to contact, along w/ a lot of other things. I've messed w/ it a bit, but the best time to use it would be when you're at a batting cage which I haven't had much time to do this year.

But if you're a coach of a little league team, or you just want to work on your own kids swing it's a pretty damn cool little device.

http://www.blastmotion.com/products/baseball/

[pioneer98]

So this is how the regular season standings ended up in our 6 team league:
Team A - 19-1
Team B - 16-4 (our team - all 4 losses to Team A)
Team C - 13-7 (all 7 losses to Team A and Team B)
Team D - 6-14
Team E - 5-15
Team F - 1-19

Our top 3 teams finished 1st, 2nd and 3rd in the city tournament, which is about 20 teams. If you count the city tournament and now the end of season tournament, our team is 19-5, and all 5 losses are to Team A. Team A is 24-1, their only loss to Team C. We play Team A Thursday in the finals.

Our semifinal game was tonight against Team C. We didn't deserve to win IMO. First off, our coach started our #2 pitcher. He had a bad night. The other team was up 4-0 in the top of the first, and had 2 on and only 1 out. Then coach brought in our #1 pitcher and he got out of the jam. Then we chipped away and got it to 4-3 by the 3rd inning. Then coach pulled the #1 pitcher with 2 outs in the third inning when he hit a pitch count. This way he will be eligible to pitch Thursday. I didn't agree with this. He should have started the game IMO. If you don't win today, there is no Thursday. But whatever. We rallied and got a 5-4 lead. Then the other team rallied and took a 6-5 lead, getting 2 runs on 2 errors. Our pitcher (pitcher #3 now), threw a tantrum on the mound after each error. Kicking dirt, slamming his glove, taking off his hat, etc. I wanted to slap the kid. Both plays were ones that could have been made but not what I'd call "routine". One was a slow roller and the second baseman had to charge and rush the throw, and he overthrew first. The second was a very hard hit line drive to the center fielder. He got a glove on it but dropped it.

In the bottom of the 5th it come down to the bases loaded and 2 outs, 2 strikes, and a kid cleared the bases with a double to put us up 8-6. That was the final score.

But even in a tough win like that, again, it felt fairly joyless. There is no "team" in this team as perfectly illustrated by the whiny, bratty pitcher. When there is no "team" it no longer feels like a "game", it feels like a mechanical exercise. Our group of kids going through a mechanical exercise ended up with more runs than the other group of kids going through a mechanical exercise.