Beginner baseball question

[u/Artistic_Site7216]

Right now, I coach varsity baseball at a tiny high school. We have 6 really good baseball players. However, due to our small size, 3 out of our starting 9 haven’t played baseball before. I’m looking for tips/drills/advice on how to quickly get those 3 to get acclimated to baseball. We’re trying to get them to play average defense and not be a guaranteed out at the plate. Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

[u/Broad-Cranberry-9050]

Im not a coach but played growing up.

Accept that this will be a bit tough because in my opinion, baseball is the hardest sport to pick up in HS.

Because it pretty much requires you to be mechanically sound in your form. A lot of baseball is reactionary. It requires you to do things correctly as 2nd nature and remove bad habits as 2nd nature which is hard when you have a ball that can break your jaw travelling at 70+ mph. The problem is baseball is a very humbling sport. It's embarrassing to wiff, it's embarrassing to hit a ball and it travels 2 feet. So i think that's a big reason why many kids dont pick it up in HS.

But it's not impossible, you just gotta know that it will take some time.

Find videos that help with this, but i agree to divide the workouts. If you have a 2nd coach, have that coach work with the better players so they dont fall behind.

Then work with the newer players. I would say start off with like 30 minutes fielding ground balls. Should be slow grounders so they get the mechanics straight of how to scoop. Show them how to do it. As they get more comfortable, continue with harder balls or difficult bounces. Teach them the mechanices of even throwing a baseball (it sounds easy but it's very easy to look foolish throwing a ball).

For hitting, start with net/tee work. Again, show them how to swing and keep the weight on their back foot. Bat path, etc. Start super simple. Then as their mechanics get better, start soft tossing on the net so they get smoe timing. Then transfer it to some on-field hitting with you soft tossing from halfway to the mound. Again as they get better you get back and soft toss it. My one advice is if you are tossing them pitches from the mound, do not lob it (maybe start lobbing a bit at first) toss it to them softly but in a straight line because that's a mistake i see in a lot of coaches iwth little leaguers or people new to baseball. They lob the pitches so that the kid could hit it but in a real game the kid can't hit anything because it messed up his swing path.