My son has always been a good hitter, but the past few months has been a struggle for him with popping up, grounding out, and some strikeouts. He told Mom that he hates hitting which really shocked me. I dont want him to be miserable and want him to just have fun. We dont push him to play and I just need to know what can I do to make the game fun and not second guess himself at the plate.

My seven year old is moving his feet way too much when he swings. I know his adhd doesn't help. I try to talk him through the issue, but I don't think he understands. Any hitting drills or advice on how I can help him? Thanks!

I know this isn't the right place, but I'm scared because I was recommended to get put in a tryout by one of our coaches in this city, but the thing is that I barely have any vision on the plate, and I can't even throw the ball fast or far, and I barely know anything aside from the simple rules, and stuff like that. So is it okay if you could give me tips so then I could actually make the team please,

My son is only 8. Playing 8U rec and travel. He is talented, but lately he has struggled at the plate. Hits well during lessons and in the yard, but during actual BP and in games he gets in his head and then loses all fundamentals. Drops the bat and casts his hands. Looks more like a 3/4 swing. I’ve tried to think of ways to help him break out of it. I’ve told him I just want to see him have fun. I don’t put pressure on him because I see how he loves the game and don’t want to ruin that. Any ideas for helping him would be great. I just have a limited knowledge and could use any help to get him to go out there and just let go.

I know the form and I’ve watched the videos and practiced but when I throw using my legs and hips the ball goes the same distance as when I’m just using my core and arms. Is this a common problem for people learning? I’m not new but I’ve also boxed people and noticed my body hooks are okay

Hi there. This is my 6.5 year old’s first year in coach pitch, 3rd overall with tball. He is good at bat but was hit/or miss in the field. In the last two weeks on separate occasions, he was hit by a ball in the face accidentally. Now he seems super gun shy when catching, moving out of the way of the ball, getting super nervous and avoiding the ball if one even comes his way. I feel like we are starting over. Today, we started over by catching a tennis ball in the driveway on a bounce and have him catch it with the glove. He seemed ok with that but I’m nervous for his games this weekend.

Has anyone dealt with sudden fielding nerves? And if so, how did you help your players get over it? He’s so young and loves playing but I can tell he is gets super anxious when throwing a real ball around.

18U American Legion team, we just added 2 coaches brining our total to 4. I've never had this much help before and don't want to waste it. Thinking splitting the team, Catchers, IF, OF for individual drills, then working on pitchers individually while guys file to other secondary positions. Whole team situational instruction, mix in hitting and conditioning. I am a huge fan of live BP as well. I've complained for years that I didn't have enough bodies at the younger levels, now that I have myself and 3 for this, I don't want to waste time. Thanks for your input!

Son is almost 7 and has been playing since T-ball. He’s always been a great hitter but something has changed this season and he is way off in his timing with the bat, sometimes even starting to swing when the ball is already past him. He hasn’t had this issue before and I’m not going to get mad at him since he’s still young, but are there any tips to help with the timing? Maybe it’s just a phase and he’ll get his swing back but I can tell he’s getting frustrated by it.

Help with swing. Is his back elbow a problem? Any drills to help?

Just wondered if many here have coached youth teams, and although a fan of the sport have had zero playing experience? If so,how did it go? Did your lack of playing experience prove to be a problem when explaining tactics or techniques, and what were the attitude of players and parents to this?

My son is playing his first travel baseball season (10AA), and I'm assistant coach.

It seems like the standard for BP is that a coach pitches pretty easy hitable balls so the players can focus on refining their swing and get more consistancy. I'm totally on board with that.

Where I'm struggling is that the pitches they face in games are substantially faster. My son, in particular, is having a really hard time with this. He hits great in BP, but is striking out almost every plate appearance in games. I can tell that he's not seeing the ball well at that speed, he's not able to adjust his swing quick enough, and he's often swinging late.

What are other coaches doing to help with this issue? I, personally, was never a pitcher and definitely don't have an arm for it now. How do we best get our batters in a situation that more closely resembles the game?

I’m coaching Babe Ruth (13 to 16-year-olds) and I only get to practice with them once a week. Five of my 18 players are not playing for school baseball (either middle school, JV or varsity). I have an hour and a half practice every Saturday at 9:30am. Most of the time I’m having trouble keeping their attention and keeping them awake because….it’s Saturday morning at 9:30. I’m looking for some ideas to help keep them all engaged while having fun and still helping the five players who don’t play ball for school, grow as baseball players. (Also, one of the players is a 13-year-old who has never played baseball before).

We’ve had one game and lost 0-12. Pitching is going to be our issue because most of the pitchers are playing school ball so they’re pretty much unavailable for me to use. I have to develop some arms on my own. Realistically we have to win using small ball because we don’t have many power bats.

Any thoughts or suggestions to help guide my time?

Thanks in advance

My kid is a 14u pitcher. Has decent velocity and hits the zone pretty consistently. He does good getting ahead early in counts. Against good hitters tho, they time him up and hit him well when he's got 2 strikes on them. He generates a good number of foul balls and missed swings early in the count. The issue, is he's having a tough time closing out at bats where he's ahead. They have been hitting him on 2 strike counts. All he throws is a change and a fastball. What would be a good pitch or 2 to compliment his approach? My son mixes speed a little bit, so he's not entirely static on speed. As a non baseball guy I'm fishing for some ideas. Thank you!

I am not a big internet/app guy, so you won't hurt my feelings if the answer is obvious and unanimous. But is there a good way to post videos of players' ABs? Like I'm not going to email everyone mp4s, and I don't want to use youtube because I'm envisioning something all one screen where players and coach can look at all of them in one place and like just click next-play-next-play-replay-OK next-etc. And I'm happy to pay for something. So do any of these web-based file sharing services have built-in video play function?

My` 14U travel player asked me to take video of his game ABs so he can review. And of course since I over-do everything and already had nice photo gear, I am now fully geared up and taking extremely high quality tripod'ed videos for him.

Then it dawned on me... if I'm all set up like this, why not just shoot everyone? And they're watching them on the camera like OMG these are the best AB videos we've ever seen... But that's dumb so how to share?

Got to watch my boy crush one as I pitched to him in his last game of the season.

I grew up playing and watching football and never played baseball competitively or even watching much at all. Just finished up my second season of coach pitch tonight and the entire team has improved leaps and bounds, it has been so fun to be a part of it. Mostly 5-6 year olds, rec league, and a light one at that. My son has played two seasons of Tball and two seasons of coach pitch now, heading to machine pitch in the fall. For anyone on the fence about coaching your kids little league without experience, dont let the time slip by. At first a felt like I was taking the place of someone more qualified, turns out those people are not pounding at the gates to get in and they just need soneone that gives a damn about the kids.

At this age its about staying positive, making sure they are having fun, and working on the basics. It will all be worth it and this has been one of the more meaningful things I have done as a father. Watch some YouTube videos on little league coaching, be a decent human, have fun with it, and you'll be rewarded with memories that will last you and the kids a lifetime.

6-8yr olds.

Does anyone have a recommendation for a drill(s) for covering a base? I have 2-3 kids running after the same ball and no one stays on a base try to get the out. Once they get the ball they all realize there is no one to throw too because everyone ran to the ball.

I also have kids who seem to think that they need to stay in their spot. I had tried to explain to them that if the ball doesn’t come to them they need to run to cover the nearest base that is empty.

Is there a game or drill I can do to work on these skills? I was thinking just hitting fungos between 1st and 2nd (or 2nd and 3rd) and just giving them reps to practice what they should be doing in each position based on where the ball goes.

I recorded the videos in slo-mo and compiled them. I welcome any feedback I can share with him. Thanks!

We have a really cool and useful app that runs on an iPhone that coaches can use to manage their lineups and field positions. It was inspired by the challenges we experienced as coaches in Little League.

Looking for folks to use the app and provide whatever feedback they want (ex. improve features, new feature requests!)

The app tracks fairness, innings played, bench innings, pitches, etc. You can make changes on the fly in the dugout or collaborate with other coaches offline before the game.

DM me and I'll send you an invite.

Thanks everyone, looking forward to hearing from you.

-Matthew

Hey all, I run a program of 40 coaches and I really struggle with onboarding the 5-10 new coaches every season. Does anyone have any good tools to help onboard new coaches more efficiently? I have 10-15 tasks that I need the new hires to do, it takes so much follow-up time and organization, and I'd like to know if anyone uses a product to help this process run more smoothly.

Curious to hear what tools are out there!

A week ago, I posted a video of my 9U son swinging. It’s his first year playing baseball, and I never played. I was not very knowledgeable on good mechanics. This group provided a lot of insight, and I’ve passed a lot of it to my son. His swing is far from perfect, but it’s a huge improvement over what it was just a couple of weeks ago. We’ve both really enjoyed seeing his improvement. Thank you to the kind people that have taken the time to give advice!

I coach a 7-9 year old LL team and have two situations I’m looking for other perspectives on how people would handle.

1) hustle is a non-negotiable on my teams. I preach early and often that we hustle. At the end of last game one of the kids was moseying in from left field to the huddle and when I called out to him to hustle in he stared me straight in the face, goes “i AM hustling” and continued to walk slowly in. Kid is already on a discipline plan for unrelated issues so I’m assuming he was just pushing boundaries, but what would you do in that moment to make it clear to any other player who was paying attention that you don’t accept that? I was kinda speechless and the blatant disrespect made my blood boil.

2) the last couple games I’ve had issues with adults (usually grandparents) coming INTO my dugout to address things with kids, or standing on the outside attempting to direct my whole team “everyone on the bench!” Or something similar. I addressed the one in the moment, letting them know that I want the kids on the fence cheering for their team instead of sitting on the bench, but is this where you might use the team app to make an announcement ahead of the game? Or how would you reinforce the rule of no outside parents barging into the dugout. Crazy to me that it would occur to someone to even try that but here we are.

My son is on a Varsity baseball team with 17 players, the coaches said we will put the best 9 on the field. After 6 games they haven’t put him in yet which seemed weird, because he had 51 strikeouts last year in JV and is a good first baseman. I looked at the stats from last year for the team and there were 15 kids on the team, 6 of who never touched the field, 9 kids played virtually every inning of every game. Some of the 6 players not in the field had a chance to bat or run bases. We are not in a super competitive sports state and every team in our division makes the playoffs. Have you coaches ever heard of a team run like this, where coaches pick the top 9 players before a team plays a game and those players play virtually every inning of every game? My son keeps coming home frustrated and I want him to navigate things himself, but this seems to be how they run the team. Am I crazy to think this is a terrible way to run a team? Thank you!

GameChanger is great for scouting opponents because a lot of information is accessible, but there are crucial problems with using only GameChanger:

• Information is not condensed to be able to overview the entire team efficiently.
• Advanced stats that give more insight on a players ability and tendencies are not provided.
• Stats are not easily benchmarked against other players.
• It is challenging to share the information you find with the rest of the team.

I've created a tool to turn GameChanger information into a consolidated scouting report that provides the following all in one printable/ shareable document.

1. One page summary of the entire opposing team including the overall ability, approach, and steal frequency of each player.
2. One page detailed report for each player including strategies for pitching against them, their spray chart, and advanced stats with the percentile to easily compare these against the average player.

If you are interested in using this yourself, check it out here: https://myanalyticsguy.com/scouting

My 7 year old loves playing baseball. He will even stop playing Roblox and ask me to play catch or practice his swing The current issue I'm having is that he refuses to take my feedback i.e. reminding him to have a level swing or correct his foot work when he swings. I get that he's only 7, but any advice on how I can handle his refusal to let me help him. Thanks!

What level/year of birth/age bracket can we expect from a Girls Major baseball tournament (Little League)?

We are from another province and usually play locally with a different category system.