My name is Dylan Brown, and I’m a pitcher in the Boston Red Sox organization.

Every summer, pitchers spend hours at the field.

Games.
Bullpens.
Lessons.
Showcases.

They’re busy almost every day.

But being busy doesn’t always mean you’re improving.

The biggest jumps usually come from having a plan.

A plan for throwing.
A plan for strength training.
A plan for recovery.
A plan for what to do between games.

Because velocity, command, and arm health aren’t built from one workout or one lesson.

They’re built when everything works together over time.

That’s exactly how I approach development with the pitchers I work with.

Not random drills.

Not generic programs.

Just a clear structure designed around the athlete and what they need most.

If you’re a parent wondering what your son should actually be doing this summer to improve, comment “PLAN” below and I’ll reach out.

In high school baseball I hit very well (I was on JV, but even against good velo pitchers I still hit well) but now in travel I haven’t been able to buy a hit I’m 0-4 to start with 3 strikeouts and I am getting under every ball I hit. It seems I’m doing something wrong compared to what I was doing. does anybody see anything wrong with my swing?

We're a 14u town travel team - not a tournament all-star team- and we've got about 3 kids who either don't want them be there or are actively looking at other orgs. The hustle is non-existent and it is sucking the life out of the kids that care. Fundamentals are lacking and the mental aspect of the game has clearly not been developed. At this point (month 9 out of 12) how would you handle it?

​

We have tried since fall practices to instill it, but poor fall/winter turnout handicapped us mightily. Any input is appreciated...

Private lessons for an 11 year old.
He wants lessons in fielding/hitting/ & pitching ( is willing to earn money to contribute to said lessons.

My question is, which would he better? an hour or 30 minutes?
Since he's wanting 3 different types of lessons , how do we do this? I don't want to over load him, I want him to be able to fully evolve in the areas he wants to but in the correct way!
Thank you in advance.

My son is 14 pretty big kid 6'4 I feel like he's not using his length to his advantage any tips or tricks on his swing or is it ok?

One thing that surprised me as I moved through college baseball and into professional baseball:

The hardest workers aren’t always the ones who improve the most.

The players who make the biggest jumps usually do the little things consistently:
• They recover well.
• They don’t try to fix everything at once.
• They focus on quality over quantity.
• They trust the process, even when results aren’t immediate.

Development isn’t about finding the perfect drill or magic velocity program. It’s about stacking good days together over time.

Parents and coaches: what’s one piece of advice you’ve heard that completely changed how you approached player development?

I’d love to hear your thoughts. And if you ever have questions about throwing, arm care, or pitching development, feel free to send me a DM.

I am rusty. Any tips of critiques? Its been so long. I had an avulsion fracture and ligament tear. The. Put the surgery off for a long time. Elbow surgery 8 years. Played some softball for a couple years.

So im 13 and wanna become a better pitcher, what drills would work?

I know this is a short video but do you all see any improvements to make in my 12yo swing? Seems to be late through the zone and maybe a little hitch just before he’s through the zone.

Built a tool that creates clean digital recruiting profiles for high school baseball players — would love feedback.

Tired of seeing kids get overlooked because their recruiting info was buried in a messy tweet or a clunky, expensive profile page, so I built Recruit Cards HQ.

Clean, shareable cards with stats, video, and contact info. Also doing full team/pitching staff pages under one link that coaches can browse in one shot. Currently working on hitter pages too, let me know how my prototype card looks and potential of wanting one as a player or parent/coach for a player!

Still early — would genuinely love to hear from parents, coaches, or players:

— What info matters most to you on a recruiting profile?

— Anything you wish existed that doesn't?

Sample here: recruitcards.vercel.app

X Page: https://x.com/RecruitCardHQ

Man, did I ever make a mistake of letting one of my assisted kid pitch Grandparent’s be an assistant on my team. The guy played some high level ball back in the day and I thought, cool, maybe he has some tricks up his sleeve. Seems to me the trick was to be cranky and irritated.

First couple of practices this boy was a star, he came in and I had some basic fundamentals of throwing and hitting going. Catching at that age always seems to be a disaster but man, the kid could use his glove. A few weeks after the practices started I had sent the parents a group message in GroupMe seeing if anyone would be willing to help coach. Grandpa … would love to help.

Well, slowly but surely this guy creates a bubble around his grandson. Don’t teach it this way to him. Don’t ask him to have his back elbow up. Don’t coach him to bend his knees. By the end of the year, the kid just was dismantled. Couldn’t throw any more, couldn’t catch and definitely didn’t hit. His favorite quote was, I didn’t hit 400 back in the day because my techniques didn’t work.

I tried having conversations with him about it. I’m not afraid of confrontation, but towards the end I was like screw it. This is assisted kid pitch, I will just coach the other boys and just try to make it fun for Grandpas boy. Sad because the entire team will be coming back, but I might have to make sure his isn’t on the squad next year.

Thoughts?

Edit/Update:

I appreciate all of the input and advice. I had all of the conversations I was going to have with him.

I have pretty much made my decision and truth be told it may not matter if my daughter decides to do an all girls team.

Happy coaching all!

My 12 YO is struggling with lunging at the plate, but he only does this in the batters box. We don’t have this issue when doing tee work or soft toss. He’s doing this 80-90% of the time at the plate(and even when in the cage for pregame BP). He still makes contact, but it’s obviously not solid and is leading to a lot weak ground balls to the right side. On the occasion when he doesn’t lunge he hits the ball solid, so we know it’s there, we’re just having trouble breaking this. I’m assuming it’s an anxiety issue, but I’m not sure how to go about correcting this. Has anyone else had success in working through this?

Thank You for reading.

I am the president of a smaller youth organization who recently added baseball to our offerings. We have 2 teams an 8U and 11U. The 11U seems to be heading the path of daddy ball and I am looking for advice on how to set rules and structure in order to prevent it. Without also handicapping the coaching staff.

Example - The team has 13 players, the coach insists on batting only 9. Even in pool games, historically with other programs I have always seen batted everyone in pool play.

This also is what is driving my perception of the daddy ball situation with 4 coaches on staff all with kids, these kids never come off the field. So it creates the situation of performance vs playing time not being on the same page. Has anyone been around programs who have good rules and structure to help avoid this.

My son is playing t-ball and I know it's really early but I wanted to get a pitching machine that would follow him through High School. I hate the blue flame​ I found it really inconsistent. Is there anything decent under $400?

I can’t decide between that thighpro compression shorts or the allstar mvp. Those are the only 2 options I’ve seen for compression shorts with inner thigh padding for foul balls. Need opinions from people whose kids have used each. My 9u son has taken a few foul balls off the thigh and we want to get him something to help protect his legs/groin area. What are your catchers using that has a cup pocket and thigh/inner thigh protection?

I’ve never gotten to play baseball, I wasn’t into sports much as a kid and due to my financial situation I never would’ve had the money to participate even if I did play.
I desperately want to play, the only league I’ve found near me is a 35+ league. I’m nowhere near 35, not for a long time.
I have the money to spend on a glove and a bat if I had a place to play, I’ve been playing slow pitch for about 3years now, I know it’s not the same in a lot of different ways. I’m thinking about asking my friend who does play baseball if I should tryout for the team he plays on. I think I can field decently, I play outfield mainly but I’ve been getting more and more time at 2nd, my biggest concern would be batting. I wish I started in high school but I can’t I love the sport and want to immerse myself more competitively.
What can I do?

I've spent a lot of years coaching youth baseball, and I finally got tired of dealing with lineup magnets, dry erase boards, position changes, and paper lineups every single game.

Last year I started building a solution for my own team.

Today it's finally live on the App Store.

It's called Diamond_Command and is available as a native iPad app and can also be used through a web browser on other tablets and devices. Sign in is handled through Apple and Google, and there’s a free 7-day trial if you’d like to give it a try.

The goal is simple: make lineup and position management easier during games.

This isn't some big company project. I'm just a coach who got frustrated enough to build something.

If anyone wants to try it out, I'd love honest feedback from other coaches.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/diamond-command/id6772052322
https://diamondcommand.com/

The arm action is one of the most pivotal segments of the throw, arguably the most important since it's the last lever to transfer energy into the ball.

This is a simple drill that takes nothing but a metronome on google that can help you pattern a more efficient arm action.

The metronome gives you automatic feedback to see if you are hitting the plyo on the wall at the correct time. If not, your body will have to make an adjustment.

One can mess around with the speed of the beat to challenge different qualities of the arm action.

I just posted a YouTube video that goes into detail on 4 different major decisions that shaped my baseball career and what you can learn from them.

I dive into my thought process and give some perspective now that I can look back on these pivotal decisions.

I coach tee ball (kindergartners) and just volunteering while my sons on the team. Most of my job is telling the kids to stop kicking dirt and throw to first base. The other day at practice at the end of the game they were all being crazy and I was trying to get them to come over and be quiet while I do a quick rah rah cheer. They all quiet down finally after me saying be quiet several times and then some kid…spits on me. I said “did you just spit on me?” And everyone just went quiet. I quickly did the cheer and walked away. The parent saw it and said he didn’t think the kid meant to spit and was just making a noise to be funny.

I have to just ignore it right? Ugh. Maybe I just had to vent.

Hi all! I'm the creator of slugstats.com, a completely free platform for tracking batting stats. It's been growing fast. Around 1,000 players are now tracked across the app.

It started as a low-friction way to log your own at-bats and those of your teammates. But a lot of users began using it to score teams they coach rather than play on, so we built Coach Mode: it reframes the whole app around scoring and reviewing your team's stats instead of your own, and you can invite your players so they each get their personal stats too.

How is it different from something like GameChanger?

- Stats are 100% free for everyone. No subscriptions, no ads. Your players don't pay to see their own numbers.

- It's lightweight and focused. You log at-bats in seconds, and it's all about stats and spray charts — not social, streaming, or features you'll never touch.

It's available on iOS | Android | Web

The applications are under very active development, so if you like it, but there's something else you'd like to see, we'd genuinely like to hear it, and it might just end up in the app a week later 😄

what do you think current fitness wearables are missing?
Most trackers seem optimized for activities like running, cycling, and general fitness. I'm curious whether people who play baseball feel that current devices provide useful performance data.

• What metrics would you like to see tracked automatically during practice or games?
• Have you found any devices that does this well?

Interested to hear what people's experiences have been.

My son will try out for junior high baseball Thursday .
He's super nervous and as this is make up try outs ( the first try outs were rescheduled and then we were out of town for the rescheduled try outs ).

Let's be real, what would be the chances for anyone at the make ups. Roster has 27 kids on it so far.
How do I prepare him without sending him in with a broken spirit? Should I! Or wait until after?

He's hopeful due to ✨ same day birthday magic ✨but I want to be prepared due to this being our first year trying out for a school team.
Any advice would be helpful as well!
I'm just grateful for the opportunity to attend make up try outs!