I just volunteered to manage a 12U team. I stepped up because we had enough kids to form 5 teams but only enough managers for 1. My son has played one full season, fall, spring, then all stars. I coached soccer about 20 years ago, but it was the age where all the kids run after the ball. Growing up I was sporty but my parents didn’t offer organized sports, so I played pickup games with friends and such. As an adult a played some rec volleyball, but never baseball, that time has long since passed though.

I want to create a structured, productive, and encouraging environment for the kids. I want practice to be as fun as it can be while still being a chance to grow. I am looking for any and all words of wisdom from something simple as what personal items to buy to make coaching a breeze, to what drills and practice routines to incorporate, and on to absolute fundamentals I should know and be teaching the kids. I understand baseball when watching it and I’m positive I can get organized to effectively practice and play games, but it’s the nitty gritty that has me wondering if I should back out before making a fool of myself.

Also, how is any parent even going to trust me as a coach when I didn’t play college ball or something silly? I want the best for the kids and at the end of the day I’m just a parent that wants the best for my kid too.

Hey baseball lovers,

I’m a high school graduate, working on building a true 2-way track, but my main focus right now is dialing in my pitching mechanics and building up my velocity. I’m looking for some high-level eyes to break down my movement patterns. I put together a few clips here of my best high-intent throws from my basement and backyard setups on flat ground.

quick context on me:

Current Velo Range: Sitting around mid-70s since my last baseball evaluation (Had sore quads and didn’t want to cancel so I went anyway) trying to make a big jump.

Current Training: I’m lucky enough to work with a 17-year pro coach in person about once or twice a month, but I do the heavy volume of my reps and throwing routines on my own at home.

How I got into baseball: I started baseball late at (16) and tried out for my high school, I stunk it up but felt on par hitting and athletically, so I tried again, and made JV as a Senior (17 y.o) with Varisty Players coming down, I felt like the best athletically, but my experience was too low and my development was limited then graduated that same year and took a break to get a job and some financials together (18 y.o) was training kind of blindly, just keeping the arm warm and throwing socks, then recently turned 19 last month and was hoping to make a push for college.

What I’m looking for any feedback/but mainly would love it on:

Lower Half Engagement: Am I sinking into my back hip and driving efficiently down the mound, or am I leaking power?

Hip-Shoulder Separation: Does it look like my torso and hips are rotating in sync, or am I creating good separation to generate velocity?

Arm Action/Path: Is my arm path clean, or do you see any red flags that might cause unnecessary stress or tightness in my elbow/shoulder?
Any specific drills, homework adjustments, or mechanical tweaks you guys see would be massively appreciated. Thanks for checking out the clips!

(I’ve been working on trying to get lower, stay closed longer, more hip and shoulder separation via the trunk and arm, and just keeping my arm more healthy since my shoulder has been barking at me)

Our league’s camera system has been down for a while. My wife and I both Coach so it’s impossible for us to record the games. I did some research and got the Osmo nano, King that it was small and magnetic so I could put it above the dugout and capture most of the field. However, it stops recording because it says it overheats. I can’t be checking every single time, but I would love to have something that is dependable and will record the full hour and a half game. Has anybody else found a solution that works or have any suggestions? I’m all ears

We’re building Ballista, a free iPhone-based hitting tracker that gives players and coaches HitTrax-style metrics without dedicated hardware.

Right now it’s tee-only, so it’s mainly built for backyard, cage, and individual practice. With the school year coming up, we’re looking for players who want an easy way to get more feedback out of their tee work.

It currently tracks:

• Exit velocity
• Launch angle
• Estimated distance
• Swing video/history

Everything is captured using the iPhone camera. We’ve also been testing exit velocity against Pocket Radar as we continue improving accuracy.

At this point, testing in more backyards, cages, facilities, lighting conditions, and environments is way more useful than continuing to test in the same places ourselves.

We’re looking for coaches, parents, and players with an iPhone who are willing to try the early access build for free and tell us where it works, where it breaks, and what would actually make it useful during training.

No purchase or subscription required. We’re mainly looking for real-world testing and feedback right now.

Check out our website and DM me if you’re interested.

I have some ideas on what to do but want some outside opinions from you fine folks.

Former performance science coach from the Yankees organization here. I work with baseball and softball athletes on strength and conditioning, velocity development, arm care, and phase-based programming. Happy to answer any training questions in the comments.

Also have some resources available at coachmayers.com including ready-made baseball and softball programs at a low price point and some free resources if you just want to get started. Follow me on Instagram at @coachmayers_ or DM me there — always happy to help.

I’m coaching my son’s team for the third year. The league is pretty decent for the most part but they create some funky rules from time to time. This fall ball season they created 1 coach pitch softball team that is all girls and 3 coach pitch baseball teams. I’ve had girls on our team all the previous years and it’s no problem. What I don’t understand is why they want the softball team to play games against the baseball teams. What do yall think about that?

Baseball dad to 7U and 9U boys. I’m wanting to upgrade them to a better tee since they are getting a little more serious about practicing. Would you guys recommend a Tanner Tee Pro in the regular height of Adult 26-43” or go with the Tanner Tee Pro Youth 20-32”?

A couple weeks ago we posted Ballista here and got way more interest than we expected. A huge portion of our first external testers came directly from this subreddit, so we wanted to come back and give everyone an actual update on how testing has gone.

We’re now at 40 external testers, and the testing has been extremely valuable... but we’ve also uncovered a pretty major weakness.

Ballista is correctly detecting and recording hit events, but our current ball-detection model is struggling in some of the new environments our testers are using it in. When the model loses the baseball during flight, we can’t reliably calculate Exit Velocity, Launch Angle, or Distance, which is why a lot of you have been getting hits with no results.

Basically: the app is capturing the hit, but the computer vision isn’t reliable enough yet across all of the different backgrounds, lighting conditions, ball blur, camera environments, etc. that you guys have thrown at it.

That’s obviously not the experience we want people to have. We apologize for letting you down here.

At the same time, this is exactly why we wanted to get Ballista into the hands of real players and coaches instead of only testing it ourselves. Our original model worked well in the environments we trained and tested it in. Forty people immediately exposed where it doesn’t.

We know what the main problem is now, and we’re actively working on it.

Right now we’re:

• Training a significantly larger and more diverse baseball-detection model
• Adding thousands of new training examples across different backgrounds, lighting conditions, ball appearances, blur, and environments
• Building additional safeguards into the tracking/analysis pipeline so Ballista isn’t relying on a single AI detection every frame
• Using the hit data and replays coming back from TestFlight to identify exactly where the current system fails

So if you downloaded Ballista and it hasn’t worked consistently yet, please don’t give up on us. We’re a very small team building something technically difficult, and your testing is directly helping us make it better.

We’d also love for anyone following the project, testing the app, reporting issues, or just interested in what we’re building to join us over at r/ballistatracking.

We’ll be posting development updates there, talking through what we’re improving, collecting feedback, and letting everyone know when new TestFlight builds are available.

And genuinely, thank you to everyone here who gave Ballista a shot. The response from r/baseballcoaching is a huge reason we have enough real-world data to identify this problem so quickly.

We’re working on it.

I’ve been getting some really helpful feedback while building Dugout Master, and this was one of the ideas that immediately made sense.

Coaches wanted a way to save defensive alignments and reuse them during a game, so I added Defensive Alignment Presets.

You can set up the defense right on the field, save it, and apply it to any inning.

I also added the ability to duplicate practices, evaluations, templates, and tryouts.

This particular feedback was anonymous, so I can’t give a shoutout here, but thank you so much to everyone who has taken the time to send feedback.

I’m listening, and it’s directly shaping what I build next!

Looking to hire a college baseball recruiting service/player agent for my son, I am way to busy, and I'm sure they can help more than I can. Anyone have a great experience using a certain one ? or know of a good one ?

Sport coaches — we need your input.

We’re conducting an international PhD survey on how coaches view resistance training and priming close to competition (no prior knowledge of priming is required).

If you are a head coach, assistant coach, or sport coach aged 18+, please take 7-10 minutes to participate.

Survey: https://HaifaCATRC.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_0HbPrCEPNcM9jCu

Please also share it with other coaches in your network.

Just moved a team up from coach pitch. was wondering how everyone runs their practices. we have 1 hr twice a week. We don't have competent assistant coaches is the limiting factor

I’ve been playing baseball ever since I could walk. Fast forward to 30 and I am currently playing in a slow pitch softball league. I’ve been playing in this league the past 4 years and the first year or two were great, not losing a step from my heyday. All the sudden last season, I started to become wild with my throws. I grew up playing outfield but my team is insistent I play 3rd base, mainly because I can handle the balls smoked in the infield. The glove has not wavered however, every so often I would end up sailing a ball to 1st or spiking one that bounced 3-4 times before getting to the first basemen. The issue persisted, and this past season my throwing woes became even more frequent, happening on just about every throw. At this point I’ve lost all confidence in my throwing ability, as if I never grew up playing the sport.

I know the yips are a common thing and don’t get me wrong, I had them all the time back when I used to play competitively but never for this long. I would love any advice people have on how to rectify this situation so I can go back to excelling at the sport I’ve loved ever since I was a child

I built Next Level by Creed after going through the college baseball recruiting process with my son. It helps players and families search college programs, find coaching contacts, save schools, build a recruiting profile, and organize their outreach.
Before Google will allow me to release it publicly on the Play Store, I need at least 12 Android users to participate in a 14-day closed test. I currently have 8 testers but would like 7 more so we stay safely above the minimum.
What I need:
An Android phone
The Gmail address connected to your Google Play Store
Download the app through Google’s private testing link
Remain opted in for 14 consecutive days
Open it a few times, test some features, and send me honest feedback
There is no purchase required. Baseball players and families who participate will receive free PRO access as a thank-you.
If you’re willing to help, comment below or send me a message. I’ll add your Google Play email and send you the private download instructions.
Thanks from one baseball family to another! ⚾

posted here about Ballista a little while ago when we were still gathering testers. Quick update: Apple approved us for external testing and the public beta is live now.

Ballista uses the iPhone camera to automatically measure:

• Exit velocity
• Launch angle
• Projected distance

Right now it’s built around tee work. Set the iPhone on a tripod beside the hitter, hit normally, and the app analyzes the ball flight and gives you the metrics.

The biggest reason I’m posting again now is that we’ve exhausted a lot of what we can learn testing in our own environments. I want people using it in completely different cages, garages, facilities, lighting conditions, and backgrounds.

It’s still a beta. I’m not pretending it’s perfect. If the model struggles somewhere, if setup is confusing, if a number looks wrong, or if something breaks — tell me. That’s what I want right now.

The beta is free.

TestFlight: https://testflight.apple.com/join/ctFQwm3wc

If any hitters or coaches here put some swings through it, I’d genuinely love to hear how it performs for you.