Timeline for teaching certain skills....

Question
I am a high school coach, and I am wondering when I should
teach certain situations and skills during the preseason.  We
have about a month between tryouts and the first game.  What
skills and situations are most important to be taught during that
timeframe?  Thanks.

Tony Robinson

Answer
Hi Tony,

That's a tough question to answer, because a lot depends on (1) The availability of assistant coaches, and (2) ability of your players and their progress.

If you're lucky enough to have assistants available, then you can start right away by breaking the kids into groups depending on position (infielders, outfielders, pitchers/catchers) and start working on basic defensive skills. LOTS of defensive drills early on. Pitchers should begin long toss while this is happening, and light pitching to just work on location. Make it a point to remind them that velocity will come later, but to really concentrate on spotting their pitches.

After the first couple of weeks, you can then begin to position players on the field and start with situational drills. Just have them take their positions, and yell out a scenario (runner on 1st, two outs, down by one run), and hit the ball to someone (without telling them in advance). The goal here is to get the players to think "what do I do if the ball is hit to me". Baseball is at least 50% mental, so it's important to exercise that part of the game as well.

At the same time, pitchers can begin to throw harder, and you can work with them on mechanics and correct anything they may be doing wrong. At this stage, you may also want to start some base-running skills and work on lead-offs, stealing bases, etc.

You'll notice that I did not mention hitting practice -- and that was done purposefully. I don't personally believe in endless hours of hitting practice while the team is together (which usually consists of a whole field full of bored players other than the one guy going the hitting). Those skills should be worked on at the cages on an individual basis, and also as a team if you can work it out. Later you can start to incorporate some live batting parctice (where the hitters should face your pitchers). Not just a let's-see-how-hard-we-can-hit-it session....but real live pitching complete with various different pitches as they would see in a game situation.

And of course, a lot of this depends on how good your players are. If they can't hit -- well, then you'll need to concentrate on those skills. Likewise if you start to see problems with defense or pitching (although pitchers can always work out separately unless they are also position players).

There's way more to all of this, and this just scratches the surface -- but hopefully it will help get you started.

Mike Fortunato