ABCA barnstormers Clinic - USC - some key lessons

I recently attended the ABCA Barnstormer's clinic in Los Angeles. The Barnstormer's tour was a series of full-day coaching clinics throughout the west coast hosted by various universities. The Barnstormer stop that I attended was at the University of Southern California and while I participated in several different clinics that day, the USC head coach, Dan Hubbs, and another coach from Pepperdine gave particulary impactful presentations that I'll summarize here. 

Here were my key takeaways from the sessions –

• Practice grips on the ball – it sounds like a simple thing, but have your players practice getting the correct grip on the ball out of their glove. This is not necessarily a pitching thing, it’s an fielder thing too. Show your kids the correct grip and have them practice getting this grip out of the glove naturally. The correct grip that he emphasized was a 4 seam grip, which means that you're gripping the ball with your fingers across the horse shoe of the ball. One thing that he mentioned that he did as a pitcher was change the grip as he got into the windup – if he wanted a curveball grip, he would get into that grip as he brought his glove over his head on his windup.
• Important pitching keys – two of the important keys that he mentioned was to get good at locating your pitches while another was being able to change speeds effectively (what he referred to as your speed differential). One way to emphasize pitch location is by practicing it – have kids hit a certain spot in the zone. You can assign them points based on how often they hit a particular spot. Or keep working on hitting a particular spot before moving onto another spot. Another thing that he said about this is to give them a goal (i.e. a place to hit) and have their bodies learn & figure out how to get it done.
• Related to location, have scripted & unscripted bullpens – This is a pretty straightforward concept and is as it sounds. For some bullpens, the coach encouraged having a scripted bullpen in which the pitchers learn different pitch sequences. For example, throwing a first pitch curveball, then an outside fastball then an inside fastball. Whatever the sequence might be, that’s a scripted bullpen – pitchers are learning to hit specific spots in a specific sequence. An unscripted bullpen would be one where you’d ask the pitcher what he/she wants to work on and focus on that. No specific script outside of the player working on what he/she wants to achieve.
• Game – Use 4 corner catch – another idea that the coach emphasized was the importance of teaching quickness. One way of doing this is via 4 corner catch where you have players at each of the 4 corners of a square and they throw the ball around the square. This is a great game to practice quickness and exchanges, especially for middle infield players who want to practice double-plays. But, coach mentioned using it for pitchers too, to teach them how to be quick on making plays around the diamond.
• Game – Point Game – Coach mentioned this game as a possibility to do during your opening catch play, but he didn’t emphasize it. Regardless , I had heard about the game but hadn’t thought about it in a while, but it is another possible game you can play to teach locating various throws. How the game works is that you have two players playing catch and you assign points for them hitting different parts of the body on the receiver. For example, you can assign two points for hitting a player in the chest and 1 point for hitting them in the face (the receiver is catching the ball, of course). 0 points for throws anywhere else. 
• Aim Small, miss small – this is another concept that I’ve heard before. Coach emphasized this concept which means that you should have a small target. If you have a small target, it’s more likely that you’re going to just barely miss that target. If you have a huge target, you’re actually going to end up missing your intended target more often. How small should the target be? He mentioned aiming for the R in Rawlings on your catcher’s glove. I’ve also heard about players putting small circle stickers in their gloves at which throwers can aim their throw.   One thought I had after going through this session was to get a bright sticker to attach inside of the catcher’s glove to give the pitcher something to shoot for.
• King of the Hill Competition  - Coach had mentioned this idea in a different context, but his talk made me think of doing something I’d call “King of the Hill.” I think that this would be a drill that would work really well in hall ways. So, let’s say that you have 8 players. Pair them up into groups of 2 so you have 4 pairs of players. Have each pair line up like they're playing catch, which each member within a pair facing one another. So, for example, pair 1 would be on the far left while pair two would be next to them, pair three next to them and so on. Pair 1 & Pair 2 will compete against one another in a drill. Same for all of the other paired pairs. Let’s say that you want to emphasize quickness and the drill is how many back and forth throws can you make in 2 minutes. Pair 1 & Pair 2 face off. Whoever loses moves down a pair whereas whoever wins moves up. So the winners of the first two paired groups face off while the loser of the first pair faces the winner from the next pair and so on. The goal is to remain in the left-most group as long as possible.
• There are energy givers and energy takers  - As players, you can either be an energy giver or an energy taker. An energy giver is a player who, as the name suggests, gives energy to other players around him. He’s encouraging other players, he’s moving quickly, he’s acting in ways to contribute energy to the situation. Also, he’s acting in ways that ARE NOT removing energy from a situation. An example would be a catcher who keeps a high tempo in receiving the ball and getting it back to the pitcher. An energy taker catcher would be lazy, throwing the ball slowly back to the pitcher. An energy giver is encouraging his team-mates positively.
• When giving criticism, try to focus on one thing – if a player has multiple things going wrong for him/her, rather than piling on everything that is going wrong with the player and overwhelming him/her, try focusing on just one thing that’s going wrong and focus on that.
• Catchers should develop relationships with their pitchers – the catcher should learn how to talk to his pitcher by developing a relationship with him. One way of doing this is having your catchers go through drills with the pitchers. Have them play catch together. Another important aspect of this is to have your catcher participate in the pre-game bullpen with the pitcher. In some teams, you’ll see the catcher actually participating in the infield/outfield drills with the coach rather than spending time with his pitcher in the bullpen.
• Bullpens should be treated like games for BOTH the catcher and pitcher – the catcher should take these bullpens seriously as a way to work on game skills. A catcher can incorporate game skills into the bullpen, such as practicing throws down to 2B. One thing that the coach emphasized was that even if they incorporate practicing throwing into their bullpen routine, some catchers will practice the footwork but then pause at the top of their throw. The coach said this is dangerous because then you’re teaching your catchers to pause as part of their throw-down to 2B. I’m not sure of a great solution to this other than having your catchers work on the footwork and then fake a throw down to 2B.
• Catch the ball in a way that makes the glove pop – it’s a small thing, but a catcher should try to catch the ball in a way that will make the glove pop. It gives the pitcher a good mental feeling if they are hearing the glove pop when the catcher catches it.