Practice Report – 5/30/2015

With practice on Wednesday being rained out, I had the team run their gauntlet drill that they owed me on Saturday instead of hitting.  The hitting has not been what has been hurting us for the last few weeks, the defense has.

The Marlins actually did very well with the drill this time around, better than they have in the past.  In fact, they came within one play of completing a round of outfield successfully and within two plays of completing a round of infield successfully.  Backups were where they needed to be, cutoff men were hit with good throws, the easy plays were made, and effort was put forth to make the hard plays.  Yes, there were also the easy plays that were missed, mostly on fielding ground balls off to the side instead of in front of them.  The consequences were that they started that round over again.

There are three games remaining in the season, all of which will be played against teams that we have previously played this season.  I think that if we are able to play defensively like we did the first game of the season that we have a chance to turn our season around and come away with a few wins.

Practice Report – 5/13/2015

Because of our defensive lapses during our last game, I decided to break the practice up into two sections this week.  While the team worked on defense and situations on the field, I would take one of them aside at a time to work with the glove pad.

A glove pad is simply a leather pad that a fielder can put on their glove hand that acts as a glove.  The difference is that the player cannot close the glove pad as they would a glove.  So, it is essentially a tool that the player can use to stop a ground ball or popup.  The purpose of this tool is to teach muscle memory.  While the player uses the pad to stop a ball, they must also used their throwing hand to trap the ball as it hits against the rubber pad, forcing them to use two hands to field the ball.  Therefore, they are in the habit of fielding the baseball with two hands and coming up in a position where they are ready to make a throw.  I practiced both ground balls and popups with the players and almost all of them seemed to get the idea of using two hands.  As much as I have emphasized using two hands in the past, now I think they finally have a tool where they are forced to have proper form if they wish to succeed.

Perhaps this is also why I like tools such as the batting tee so much.  It forces the players to have a level swing where they do not drop their hands if they want to hit the ball.  If they drop their hands to swing, then they go right into the tee instead of the ball.

Sunday is our coming rivalry game.  If we win no other game this season, I want to win this one.

Practice Report – 5/6/2015

Because I was unsatisfied with the defense of Sunday’s game, practice consisted of nothing but me hitting balls to the team at various positions.  I put them in different scenarios, hitting the ball all over the field, combining the lessons of the last two weeks.

Practice had to be cut short due to lightning, however.  I will hopefully be able to get my full practice in on Saturday.

Practice Report – 5/2/2015

Nothing much to report here.  The team pitched and hit, as they do each Saturday.

We did, however, have a special guest hitter show up at practice.  As I have mentioned before, one of the players who had previously played for the Marlins (who made Select) came early for his practice and was sitting around the dugout.  I put him to work and had him participate in our practice.  He came up to bat a few times and hit a very, very long fly ball that eventually went into the bushes at the other side of our field.  He has become such a tremendous hitter and his bat is sorely missed this season.

Practice Report – 4/29/2015

Something that I have had to contend with in the past are field conflicts with high school teams.  Yesterday, for the first time since Senior League, I arrived at our practice field to find the girl’s JV softball team of the local high school practicing.  Apparently, a game was being hosted at the high school, which relegated the girls to using our field in the local park.  It is something that often occurs with their girls teams as I have arrived at practice before to find the field hockey or lacrosse teams practicing in our outfield.  Our permits overlapped and I had to defer the field until the girls were finished with their practice.

The convenient thing was, however, that the girls were doing the exact same drill that I wanted to do with the Marlins once the field became available.  For those who arrived at practice early, I told them to watch the girls and to see how they reacted to how the ball was hit with runners on base.  I emphasized to the Marlins that everyone has a responsibility now, especially when it comes to backing up bases.  Balls that are not caught are going to be more and more costly as they move up in leagues and baserunners are going to be taking advantage of misplayed balls.  For the first half of practice, we did the baseball instincts drill to hone everyone’s situational awareness.  What am I going to do if the ball is hit to me?  How many runners are on base?  Are they forced?  How many outs are there?  Baseball is a thinking man’s game.  You need to be aware of what your responsibilities are before the ball is hit.  Depending on the situation, that may change.

Something that is new this year is that I am giving responsibilities to the pitcher and the first baseman that I had not normally done in the past.  The pitcher is now responsible for backing up plays at home and third.  The first baseman is now responsible for backing up the play at second.  Again, the base that needs to be back up by the pitcher depends on what the field looks like.  If the runner is at second, then there is a good chance that the play will be coming home and the pitcher will need to back up the base as needed.  If the runner is at first, the pitcher is probably going to back up third base.  A few of them took better to the situational awareness than others, they just need more exposure to the exercise.  I have a feeling that this is what we will be doing moving forward at practice.  The Marlins need to realize that they have responsibilities even if the ball is not hit to them.

For the second half of practice, I took aside a few additional players who had expressed interest in pitching.  Two of them had told me that they wanted to pitch in the past and one of them got that opportunity last Fall.  The third would be completely new to pitching.  As we stand right now, we do not need any additional pitchers unless one of our regular pitchers gets hurt.  If these three players continue to practice and improve, though, they may get to see time in a blowout game.  None of them were truly game ready and were having difficulty finding the strike zone.  I re-emphasized to them that it is more important to throw strikes than to throw hard.  If you do not throw strikes, you do not pitch in games.  No questions asked.

Saturday’s weather looks discouraging, but then again, so did last Wednesday’s.  I hope we can practice this coming Saturday.

Practice Report – 4/25/2015

Much of the same as last Saturday.  Extra batting practice (one player showed up), pitching practice for a player, pitching and hitting practice, and finishing with some infield work.  I had to stop batting practice for the last thirty minutes of practice or so because my outfield, once again, started filling up with soccer players who were getting ready for their game on the field adjacent to ours.

Our game this week is at 1:00 PM at Lynnbrook again.  All are welcome to attend if you can make it out there.

Practice Report – 4/22/2015

Many of the players may have been scared off by the gloomy-looking weather.  It was raining rather heavily in many parts of the county, but not at my practice field.  Therefore, practice was held as planned on Wednesday.

I had to deal with soccer practices in all parts of my outfield today, though, so I did not get the chance to work on that outfielding play with the Marlins.  So, I worked with them on the rundown scenario for most of practice.  While it was not what I wanted to do for the majority of the time, I think it was useful.

We worked on the rundown between second and third.  When getting the other team in a rundown, the object is to tag the runner out within the first three throws.  A runner heading to third base from second stops if the ball reaches third before he does and he runs back to second.  The third baseman (who is ideally covering the bag) runs full speed at the runner in an attempt to tag him out.  If he cannot tag the runner out, then he needs to throw the ball to the second baseman, who should be covering second base, once both he and the runner are close enough.  The ball is tossed just over the runner’s shoulder.  The runner then changes direction back to third base.  After this happens, it is the third baseman’s responsibility to bail out of the basepath and allow the runner to proceed.  The reason for this is because if the runner comes into contact with the third baseman, fielder interference is ruled and the runner is awarded the base he was going towards.  The second baseman now gives chase and also has to try and tag the runner out before throwing the ball to the shortstop, who should now be covering third base (after backing up the base when the throw originally came into the infield).  Similarly, the second baseman must now bail out of the basepath so that the runner can head back to second.  The pitcher, who was backing up second base originally, is now covering second base.  After the toss is made to the shortstop, if the runner has still not been tagged out, the shortstop now gives chase and tosses to the pitcher when both he and the runner are close enough.  By now, the runner should be out.  If the runner is not out by now, then the third baseman should now be back at the base and ready to start the process over again.

Eventually, soccer practice dissipated and I was able to work with the Marlins on their outfielding.  Whenever I work with them on fly balls, I always feel like I am hitting the ball too hard.  Everything that I hit them always seems to go over their heads when I do not want the balls to go that far.  I have only ever been able to hit practice fly balls when I go full strength, as I did with the Senior League team back when I was coaching Senior Leaguers.  They need practice for sure on fly balls, but not ones that are hit over their heads.  Although, they may start seeing more of those big flies now that they are getting older.  The need to be prepared to see them.

I hope I will be able to get practice in on Saturday.  The weather has been rather chilly around here as of late and they are already predicting rain for most, if not all, of Sunday.  Our game may end up being cancelled as a result.

Practice Report – 4/18/2015

I continued having pitching and hitting practice from Wednesday today.  Unlike pitching and hitting practice from Wednesday, though, today there was a live count and players were getting balls and strikes called.  There were a number of looking and swinging strikeouts, which tells me that my team needs more practice seeing the baseball, but good for our pitchers.

Each player received two at bats for the practice while I had four pitchers throwing to them.  What I like to do is take the pitchers who will be pitching in this week’s game aside and have a special pitching practice for them so that they can get their work in to prepare for the game.  Since I was running out of pitchers, I had two of the three pitchers throw batting practice to their teammates.  After practice ended, I had pitching practice with them, but only asked them to throw fifteen pitches each.  I hope I did not end up wearing them out before today’s game.

I had a talk with one of my players yesterday who seemed upset that he was not hitting the ball.  The main reason why he was not hitting the ball was because he was so desperate to get a hit that he was swinging at pitches that were out of the strike zone.  I explained to him that for his role on our team (he is traditionally a table-setter, top of the order batter), that he does not need to worry about hits.  He needs to worry about getting on base by any means necessary (not just hits, but walks, hit by pitches, running out ground balls, etc.)  This is how he can best help our team.  To help with his batting, though (he was also one of the players who had to stay for pitching practice), we spent some time in the batting cage after pitching practice had ended.  Sure enough, he was swinging at good pitches (although not connecting that frequently) and laying off the bad ones.  This only confirmed for me my decision to bat him in the order where he bats.  I told him this as well.  He has perhaps the best plate discipline on the team, he just was not showing it in practice.

He later told me that he wants to be the guy does both roles: gets on base and gets the big hits to drive in runs.  I told him that he does not need to worry about doing that.  His focus should be to get on base, use his speed to his advantage, and score as many runs as he can.

Our first game of the season is today at 3:00 PM.  We are playing a team that we last played when these guys were in machine pitch together.  I looked up the game from one of our old scorebooks and saw that we only beat this team by a run two years ago.  They were a strong-hitting team then and they are most likely a strong-hitting team now.  Our pitchers and defense need to be ready.

Practice Report – 4/15/2015

With the first game of the season approaching on Sunday, I realized yesterday that I had not really given the chance for our pitchers to get out there and show me their stuff.  So, I did something that I do not normally let the players do at Wednesday practice: bat.

With six pitchers at practice, I was especially interested to see what our two new pitchers had to offer.  I broke the team down into three groups with one catcher and two pitchers per group.  Each pitcher would throw ten pitches to three batters.  The tenth pitch is treated as “live” and the batter runs it out if he hits it, sits down if he strikes out, or walks if the pitch is a ball.  I was able to get all of my pitchers at least twenty pitches each.  The first four got all thirty, but I had to cut the last two short at twenty each as we were running out of time.

I was very happy with what I saw in general.  I was especially happy to see that the pitcher who I felt needed the most improvement from the Fall got a bit stronger in his arm and was able to throw many strikes.  He has a bit of a disadvantage from the other pitchers as he is a bit smaller than they are, but he has certainly come along on the mound over the long offseason.  I was also happy that the player who I think has the best velocity on the team had not lost any of his zip.  He has had a few confidence issues on the mound because he has not been throwing many strikes when he gets the chance to pitch in games, but he looked pretty good if you ask me.

Now comes the time to plan for the game on Sunday.  I have a pretty good idea of what I want my batting order to look like.  It will be confirmed on Saturday after we have batting practice.

Practice Report – 4/11/2015

With Spring Break still on, only four players attended practice on Saturday.  I originally did not intend to practice on Saturday, but with practice on Wednesday rained out, I felt obliged to have practice on Saturday.

With the low attendance, we spent our time in the batting cage again and hit.  Fence drill, batting tee, and then some live pitching.

Something that all of the players on the team seem to be doing right now is that they all have backwards movement in their hands before they swing the bat.  I’m not sure where this comes from, because I’m not teaching them to do this.  It is as if they feel they need to cock themselves like a gun before they swing.  The adjustment that I’m asking them to make is that I want them to begin in a position where they have already “cocked” themselves so that they are already in a position where they can just throw their hands through the zone.  All their bringing their hands back accomplishes is that is causes their swing to take longer to get to the ball.  Long, looping swings will not be beneficial to the players as they get older and the pitches get faster.

Something else that I will never forgive myself for doing is hitting one of my players during batting practice.  Despite the fact that we are still using squishy baseballs, the players are still at the point where getting hit with the baseball really hurts to them, especially if they get hit somewhere that does not have a lot of padding.  This happened yesterday when I hit a player during batting practice on his forearm just below the elbow.  I always cringe whenever I do this.

I hope everyone will be back at practice on Wednesday.  I am planning on having a few of our new players showcase their pitching skills to see what they can offer us.