Batting Cage Hitting Drill Tips and Coaching Points

Here are several drills and tips that I feel help you get the most benefits out of hitting in the cage:

Front Toss - The pitcher is sitting and throwing from behind a safe "L" screen. The batter is going to work inner third or outer third. The batter will get 8 tosses. This is a great drill because it provides for more repetition, location mastery, and help develop great mechanics. Coaching Points:

• The pitcher should go through as pre-toss motion that simulates a pitchers wind-up. The batter is to use this motion to load and "trigger". The pitcher should obeserbve the batter and not toss it if the batter does not "go to the proper load" body position.
• The pitcher will often get the ball up and hold it at the toss or release point or fake a toss. This makes the hitter stay loaded and back. This teaches the hitter to not guess or lunge.
• The toss should be a wrist flick of the ball at a distance no more than 12 feet. The batter should pull or turn on the 8 inner third tosses and take the 8 outer third tosses to the opposite field.

"Bounce" Breaking or Off-Speed Batting Cage Drill - The batting practice pitcher simply bounces the ball in fron of the batter so that it bounces across the plate as a strike. The batter must stay back and drive the ball to the opposite field. The pitcher only does this every 3rd or 5th pitch. It is done just enough to keep the batter "honest" and prevent the batter from guessing or jumping at the ball. The act of keeping the hands and weight back is one aspect of becoming a great hitter.

Coaching Point: Make it a rule that balls do not get hit into the top of the batting cage. I will sometimes make batters do pushups or squat thrust if they hit a ball into the top of the cage. "Line-drives" make the world go round" so make sure that your batters are striving on every swing to hit a line-drive into one of the two sides or the end of the batting cage net.

I hope this tips are useful. Good luck til next time, Nick