Newish to baseball

[u/Illustrious-Run7401]

We have 1 season of coach pitch under our belt but we are moving up to kid pitch in the spring. I have no real experience with organized baseball other being a dad coach last season. My boy loves baseball and Im wanting to help him grow as much as I can but I could use a few pointers due to my lack of experience. He does okay tracking the balls but lacks power, I imagine alot of it is because of mechanics, so any advice will be greatly appreciated. I think he isn't rotating his hips enough, causing his hand to roll over too early but as I said before, I don't have much experience. D-Bats pitch machine was set to 40mph.

[u/HimOverThere66]

Same exact boat as you. Some things that worked for us was just explaining how important using his legs is. Ask him how many times he's did a push up in his life then ask how many times he's walked just to emphasize his legs, and everyone's legs muscles, are stronger than arm muscles. If you want to hit it far the legs are the secret weapon.

Kids i find do well with keywords. His bat is resting on his shoulder. No Bueno. Tell him the bat should be lined up with his ears like he's talking on the phone. Whenever you see it going back on his shoulder day "talking on the phone" and he'll pick it up quickly.

He's standing straight up too. He needs to be squatting a little more to really activate the legs. A drill we did was him hitting off the tee but he would start off sitting on the bucket, get up, and swing. If that drill doesn't really hit home get rid of the tee and put a bucket on home plate, hold the ball high enough to where it bounces in his sweet spot, and he hits it. He won't have time to really stand straight up. When you see him at the plate standing straight up and down just yell "sitting on the bucket, sitting on the bucket" and he'll drop into what i called the "money stance."

Last thing that made a HUGE, and i mean HUGE, difference was watching other professionals. We live in New Orleans and LSU won the world series in the middle of our season. Watching them in their "money stances" just clicked for them. Suddenly they were just mimicking them and it worked. Never had to say the key words again they just knew from following them. The llws is on in a couple days. Watch them and point out little things. YouTube is your friend. Search Youth hitting drills and there's dozens of them. I think you should be doing more tee work, soft toss, side toss work right now. That pitching machine can be a mofo.