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My Top 10 Baseball Coaching Tips
If you are new to the game search out veteran coaches and ask for coaching tips. Find websites like this one that will teach you the fundamentals. What ever you do, always look for new ways to reach your players.
Times are different then when I grew up, and I have found that attention spans are short and patience is thin so you need these coaching baseball tips to find ways to keep practices interesting and competitive.
I hope these coaching baseball tips work as well for you as they have for me.
1. Have a preseason parent’s meeting. This should be mandatory for every team. More problems can be eliminated than you can imagine, if you plan this meeting right. Spell out your coaching philosophy, and parental behavior at games. Playing time is the #1 parental complaint. Deal with this up front at this meeting and you will avoid problems during the season.
Enlist your assistant coaches and find a couple of scorekeepers.
Inform them of the importance of punctuality in bring their kids to practice and picking them up after. Otherwise you will spend half your practice waiting for players to arrive, and spend your dinner hour waiting for them to be picked up.
The parents meeting is #1 of all my coaching baseball tips.
2. Find assistant coaches. You can never have to much help when coaching baseball. If you can’t find qualified coaches enlist the help of parents to help you run drill stations and handle administrative details like uniforms and scorekeeping.
3. Emphasize the fundamentals. The proper mechanics for throwing and hitting are seldom emphasized enough. Injuries occur when children use poor mechanics. Teach proper warm ups and insist they are performed before practice begins.
4. Have a plan and work your plan. If you are serious about coaching baseball take the time to develop a practice plan based on the skills you need to teach. Pick out the fundamental skill sets appropriate to your age group and practice drill and practice again.
5. Spend 30%-40% of every practice on pitching. This is why you need assistants. Someone should spend this much time at every practice with your pitchers. This does not mean they pitch all of this time, they can work on mechanics and drills like balance drills,
and towel drills. If the players can lead off at your age group, you would also include holding runners on and fielding bunts. Players should throw batting practice once they can throw strikes on a regular basis.
6. Teach every player how to bunt. Bunting is a lost art that needs to be revived. For the player who struggles to hit bunting can be a confidence booster and run producer.
7. Teach defensive movement. This is nothing more than having every player moving when the pitcher reaches the top of his windup. Nobody is standing flat footed. This also means that on EVERY hit ball, every player has a place to move to. If they are not catching or throwing the ball they must be moving to a backup position. Statues don’t play baseball nobody is standing and watching the play.
8.Emphasize aggressive base running. Run out every hit ball regardless of where it’s hit to. Come out of the batters box as if you are going for a triple, even if it’s a routine grounder or fly ball. Break on every pitch as if you are going to steal even when your not. A runner in motion puts pressure on a defense. They move out of position to cover the runner and base hits squeak though. Pitchers rush their motions when a runner breaks and lose their concentration. I believe in pressure, pressure, pressure when it comes to base running.
9.Praise in public and criticize in private. Remember these are kids we are coaching not adults. If you need to get on a player pull him aside privately and speak with him. On the other hand if you have something good to say share it with the whole team.
10.It’s about the kids Emphasize sportsmanship, discipline, teamwork, and persistence. Winning will take care of itself. Your job (should you choose to accept it.) is to help the players learn the game, enjoy themselves, and advance to the next level of the game.
These 10 coaching baseball tips do not include mechanics or drills but they do lay a foundation that will help show remakable improvement in your team.
If you have your own coaching baseball tips that you would like to share please email them to us and we will post them on this site.
About the Author
10 Year veteran of coaching youth baseball. Owner and webmaster of Baseball-for-Parents.com
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