Here's a drill that I love to run with infielders to help our guys perform under pressure and practice making quick exchanges/throws. I learned this drill in college. We called it "Taters" but feel free to come up with whatever name you wish. 
  The basic idea behind this drill is to make throws around the diamond while a baserunner runs. The infield must complete its actions & throws before the baserunner makes it back to home plate. 

​Setup -

• Have a full infield, minus a pitcher - so you have an infielder at 3B, SS, 2B, 1B and C positions. 
• Have several guys with helmets on who will be baserunners. Have the rest of your guys off to the side with their gloves ready, ready to take the field if necessary.

Round 1 -

• Coach hits groundball to the 3B. As coach hits the ball, first baserunner takes off for 1B and begins to circle the bases.
• 3B fields ball and makes throw to first.
• 1B throws around the horn - throwing to 2B, who throws to SS, who throws to 3B who then throws to C. 
• C throws back to 1B and you go around the horn again like above, EXCEPT that you skip the 3B player (the one who made the initial ground ball play).
  
• So catcher throws to 1B, 1B throws to 2B, and then the SS skips throwing to the 3B and throws directly home. So, while the infield defense has been going around the horn twice (skipping 3B the 2nd time around), the runner is continuing his single lap around the bases.
  
• The OBJECT is for the defense to complete making the initial defensive play and two around the horns before the baserunner reaches home plate. If the defense succeeds, you move on to Round 2! If the defense fails, you immediately switch out all the new fielders. New infield team starts over from Round 1. Switch baserunners as kids get tired/haven't run etc. 

So, round 2 is identical to round 1, except that coach hits the ball to the SS. Runner takes off on contact. SS throws to 1B, 1B throws to 2B, 2B to SS, SS to 3B, 3B to C (first around the horn complete). Then C to 1B, 1B to 2B, 2B SKIPS SS and throws to 3B, 3B home and, hopefully, beats the runner. 

So you keep proceeding like this until the defense has been successful with groundballs to all defensive positions (3B, SS, 2B, 1B) - this means you'll have 4 rounds. Now, usually, for youth teams, it is pretty difficult to get them to get through the 1st 4 rounds with no mistakes. So you can usually call it good after they get through 4 rounds. If one team makes it look easy, though, or you have a more advanced group you can proceed with Round 5!

In Round 5, you do the same procedure as above EXCEPT that now you're turning double plays. So in round 5, coach hits to 3B (runner takes off for 1B), 3B to 2B to 1B to complete the double play then 1B starts around the horn #1 by throwing to 2B, who throws to SS, who throws to 3B who throws to catcher. Catcher starts the 2nd around the horn by throwing to 1B, who throws to 2B, who throws to SS, who SKIPS 3B and throws directly home and, hopefully, beats the runner. If any error is made, defensive team hustles off the field, new team hustles on and you rotate your baserunners. The new team starts from the very beginning (round 1)

If your team gets through all of the double-play rounds, you can then move onto triple-plays. I don't think I've ever seen a team do that. 

This is a GREAT drill to practice making plays under pressure and causing them to think while under pressure. The baserunner applies natural pressure without the coach having to work a stop watch. The other benefit of that is you get to work on baserunning at the same time. The players have to be able to think/communicate while under pressure because they have to remember to skip the fielder on the 2nd around the horn. It's also a beautiful drill because guys will make mistakes, but the beauty of it is that your team-mates can pick you up. Let's say that the SS makes a bad throw to 1B, the 1B makes a great scoop to pick up and the play continues. That really pumps up them up. Also, it can teach them to stick with the play even if they make a mistake - if they overthrow a guy, chase the ball down and keep trying - maybe the baserunner will trip, you never know. The coach should be reasonable here, though, if the error is really bad and there's no chance they're going to catch up, kill the play and get a new team out there. Keep it moving. Plus the kids are moving almost constantly, so it's a good conditioning drill, too. 

   Recently, I've been thinking more about the mental side of baseball and how to introduce this to my team. A few different influences have shaped my thoughts on this over the past few weeks and my Thanksgiving drive today allowed me to mold those thoughts into an actual plan. So, disclaimer here - I have not tried this plan with a team yet but hope to try it out soon. These are my thoughts about how I could see a basic potential mental training plan panning out. Note also that what I present here focuses mainly on developing a breathing and meditation practice. I also believe in developing proper overall mentality by discussing mindsets (growth vs. fixed) among other things, but I will not adresss those other points here. Primary influences in building this have been Alan Jaegar, who I heard speak at a California coaches clinic, and Jeremy Sheetinger's interview with Nate Trotsky.
   First things first - I think the importance of the mental game needs to be explained to and actually practiced with athletes. Many say that baseball is 90% mental but the mental game is either never practiced or, if practiced, is practiced very little. I have always known that the mental side was important, but being able to explain the "why" behind it is just as important to get young athletes to buy into a regular mental game practice routine.
​   One way that can help explain the why involves getting players to think about "the zone" - when they feel that they are in "the zone," what are they actually feeling? Many, I'm sure, would describe an increased sense of focus, a feeling of calm and an ability to concentrate. 
   Once you get them to describe what the zone feeling is, I believe that you can introduce breathing exercises such as square breathing as a way to facilitate those feelings of focus and calm (aka, the "zone" feelings). Square breathing is an exercise during which the breather breathes in for 4 seconds, then holds the breath for 4 seconds, and then breathes out for 4 seconds. Repeat as many times as you wish. You can also vary the timing from 4 seconds to any other length of time that you desire. Check in with your athletes afterwards - how do they feel? Do they feel that engaging in this activity has increased their "zone" feelings? 
   After introducing square breathing, I would leave it at that for Day 1. You've so far introduced them to the concept of being able to adjust their state simply by engaging in a breathing exercise, thus emphasizing the important connection between the breath and both their physical and mental state. To take it to the next level, I believe that you need to introduce them to the concept of meditation.
   Meditation, in my opinion, should be introduced to athletes in a similar way to how we introduced them to square breathing. We first need to explain the application of meditation while also introducing it as a way to enhance and or strengthen their mental state. I personally believe that meditation is great for developing the ability of one to notice their thoughts and realize that one can have thoughts but choose to not engage them. Simply strive to be an observer of the thoughts passing through your mind - let them pass through like clouds passing across a blue sky. Meditation can help us do this. 
   While developing the ability to notice your thoughts is one application of meditation, another is to remind your players that in order to perform optimally in a game they'll have to be "in the zone" (mentally focused) for up to several hundred pitches. Developing that kind of focus and not taking plays off (as Trotsky has said) will not come easy and will require practice.  
   So, how do we practice meditation? Calm.com offers free guided meditation which can walk you through the basics. Again, the key lesson that I believe the coach needs to relate to his or her players is that you're never going to be able to completely clear your mind. What you do have control over, however, is whether you choose to engage the thoughts in your mind or not. Don't fight the thoughts - just notice them. It's a skill that has to be practiced through meditation. 
   As a sidebar, I think that at some point while explaining these mental concepts to your players, it's important for them to understand that there are 3 main periods of time in which we can exist - the past, the present and the future. While we want to maintain living in the present moment as much as possible, different thoughts cause us to experience various emotions which may detract from our optimal mental state. Thoughts about an error we made (the past) can cause sadness and regret whereas thoughts about the future yet to come may cause anxiety. On the other hand, residing in the present moment can bring feelings of calm and focus (remember these? These are the same feelings we associated with being in the "zone"). So the key point difference between maintaining presence in an optimal state is our thoughts. If we're feeling regret or sadness, we may be engaging thoughts about the past whereas if we're nervous or anxious, we may be engaging thoughts about the future. The key is to learn how to have these thoughts but NOT engage them. 

Implementing the ideas - 

To summarize, here are some of the key ideas and practices that I believe will help develop a team's mental ability and improve mental performance.

• Start by asking the team to describe the idea mental state - When you're locked in, what does it look/feel like?
  • Ideally, you'll start to talk about focus, concentration, clear-mindedness and other adjectives that go along with a heightened mental state.  
  • Introduce breathing techniques, such as square breathing, as a way to enhance mental clarity and state. Emphasize a focus on the breath. Check in with your athletes after using the technique - how do you feel? Do you feel a heightened mental state? 
  • I would recommend stopping at this point for your first session.
• At your next session, explain the 3 different states of being and emotional characteristics related to each. 
• Introduce meditation as a way of developing your athlete's ability to observe and choose which thoughts to engage which will then help the athlete keep his/her mental state rooted in the present. While practicing meditation, encourage them to view their thoughts like clouds passing by in the sky. They can choose to engage the thoughts or let them pass - it's up to them. Letting them pass will provide mental clarity where as engaging them will lead to a dissipated mental state. Feel free to use a guided meditation app, such as Calm.com, to facilitate the meditation. 
  • Further qualify meditation as a way to develop mental fortitude - something in which repeated practice will allow them to maintain mental focus for long periods of time during competition. 
• Repeat, Repeat, Repeat! The team will only notice changes if they do these activities often. Start all of your classroom sessions or team gatherings with at least 5 minutes of breathing exercise. Changes will not come over night; you need to build a regular practice with your team. 

   As I mentioned in Part 1 of this series, there were several lessons that I took away from watching the 2016 MLB Postseason. While I covered playing throws on the run in my first post, I'm going to cover the concept of letting the ball travel in this post. As always, I would love your feedback - feel free to get in touch at any time. You can find my contact information on my "About" page. 

Letting the ball travel  - this came up in various ways during the playoffs. Here, while you might think that I'm talking about hitting, I'm actually talking about defense. This comes up on defense in several different ways, but the main way in which I'm referring to it is on tag plays, either pick-offs from pitchers or on throws to 2B. The idea behind this concept is when you're receiving a thrown ball, if you try to catch it way out in front of your body and then try to sweep down at the runner, you're actually taking longer than if you let the ball travel farther before you catch it. The ball itself is moving much more quickly on it's own and you'll end up getting a quicker tag to the runner if you let the ball travel as far as possible to you before making the tag. To pull this off, though, you need a great, accurate throw from whoever is delivering the ball to you. The two main guys that emphasized this for me were Anthony Rizzo and Javy Baez.
​
Letting the ball travel - Rizzo - A great video example of Rizzo doing this is here. Notice how Rizzo allows the ball to travel until it gets right on top of the runner, rather than catching the ball out in front. Of course, Rizzo needs a great throw from Hendricks on this, but the concept remains. I'd recommend practicing this with your pitchers and 1B to let the ball travel onto the runner and getting the ball to that perfect spot.

Letting the ball travel - Baez - The other poster boy for this was Javy Baez on his tags at 2B. He and David Ross regularly got runners out that really had no business getting out. One of their keys to getting so many runners out was Baez's technique at 2b - how he tagged players and how he would let the ball travel. The picture on the right shows how far Baez would allow the ball to travel. Notice that the ball is almost by him when he catches it. He puts the tag right on the runner. You can see more of Baez's techniques by checking out the hashtag #javytags on Twitter. I pulled this photo from MLB's tweet here. Again, you need a great throw to make this work, which David Ross provides. When you get that throw, let it travel onto the runner.

Other resources on tag plays -

• Kai Correa's video on tags here. Kai covers how to manage tags & footwork depending on the type of throw down to 2B. 
• Articles about Baez's tags -
  
  • Chicago Tribune - For Javier Baez, making acrobatic tags is 'just natural'
  • ​ESPN - There's no one quicker than Javier Baez when it comes to tagging runners​

Now, related to all of this is the art of tagging. As I mentioned above, one of the key aspects to the tag play was allowing the ball to travel, but another key aspect of it was how the tag was executed itself. I'm going to leave the actual mechanics of the tag play for a future blog post. 

Until next time.
-- Tom

    The MLB Post-Season is such a great time for baseball fans, and especially coaches. Everyone is focused on the games and the presentations by the TV networks is outstanding - every play gets special, slo-motion replays and there are extra microphones around the park that give you so much more insight into what's happening in the game. Twitter is also alive with various coaches tweeting out videos about certain plays or giving their perspectives. The coverage of post-season baseball just goes so far beyond what you would normally get from regular season games.
    I learned a lot from watching this year's post season games and I just wanted to share some of the lessons I learned. I would love to hear what you all learned as well, so feel free to share, add on to what I've written or contradict some of what I perceived. After writing this, I realized that I had a lot to write about these various plays, so I have broken this post up into several different parts which I will publish over the next few weeks. One disclaimer - I do not claim to know everything and the views written below are simply my perception of what's happening on the field at this point in my life. Who knows, my ideas about these various plays may change over time and several years from now, I might feel that I was way off base with the below. Please keep that in mind and feel free to contact me with your thoughts. Here's part 1! 

Lesson #1 - Playing the ball on the run -
There were two players that really emphasized this for me - Javy Baez, the Cubs' 2nd baseman, and Brandon Crawford, the Giants' shortstop. I had never really considered playing balls on the run, outside of certain slow-roller do-or-die situations, but these players played even some of the most routine grounders on the run. Just to quickly explain for the non-baseball audience what this means - I'm talking about the play where on a ground ball (either slow roller or a regular ball), the player would charge the ball and play them on their glove side while on the run. The player can then break down and make the throw from a normal position or continue to throw on the run. 
​    An example of this actually happened where Crawford threw out, guess who, Javy Baez!
See video of this play here. 
     Now, looking at this play, when Crawford made the out, you can see that the throw beat Baez easily, so why did Crawford play it on the run? If you follow the string of tweets after that tweet by Kai, you'll see some possible reasons - guys are fast and fielding it off to the side actually allows you to be more athletic against the ball. What does that mean?            
     Crawford was able more easily able to pick out the hop that he wanted on this ball by playing it on the run. He may have also just felt more comfortable athletically by playing it on the run or thought that he needed to be quick to the ball. One of these reasons introduces another concept of picking your hop. It can definitely be more complicated than this, but there are several different hops that you can get on a ground-ball - 
   a short hop - meaning that you field the ball immediately after it bounces off the ground.
   an in-between hop - meaning that you get the ball sometime after it bounces and it is now    rising up when you field it.
   a long hop - the ball has long since hopped and is now at its highest point or beginning to      go downward. 
   In my opinion, the easiest hop to field is the short hop. The ball has has just bounced and has had little opportunity to spin before it arrives in your glove. I would encourage fielders to attack the ball to get the short-hop where-ever possible. It's tough to tell on the play above whether Crawford gets the short hop or not, but he definitely gets the short hop or a very slightly in between hop.    
   Seeing Baez and Crawford do this move to various opponents definitely planted a seed in my mind to work with this more with players during the offseason. There are also different variations of this play, you do not necessarily need to field on the run and then throw on the run. If you know that you have time, you can field the ball on the run and then do two quick shuffle steps to set yourself, cut down the distance and then make the throw. In the play in the twitter video, Crawford beats Javy by several steps so he definitely didn't need to throw it on the run but probably didn't have a ton of time to take extra steps to make the throw. If it was a slow runner and he did have time, you would probably see him come out of this by taking several shuffles towards 1B after fielding the ball to make a shorter, controlled throw to 1B. 
    That being said, there are several ways to field and get rid of the ball coming out of a running play. 

• Field the ball on the run then shuffle throw - a fielder can use this movement pattern, referenced above, when he/she fields the ball and realizes that there is time to make the throw and still beat the runner. Since the fielder has time, he/she can field the ball on the run and then take several shuffles towards their target before throwing. The benefit of doing this is that this movement will cut down the distance to first base and allow the fielder to set his/her feet before making the throw. A good two shuffles can possibly cut off 6-10 feet on a throw, which on a 90-100 foot or less throw is significant. 
• Field the ball on the run and then throw on the run - the most common of the fielding on the run varieties. In this situation, the fielder fields the ball on the run off of his/her left side (if playing anywhere but 1B) and then continues to make the throw on the run. The key mechanical points on the footwork, based on my observations, is that no matter what, the throw must come off the right foot as opposed to your left foot. Now, how do they get to the right foot? What I have typically observed is that the fielder will field the ball on his/her left side as the right foot is about to plant. The fielder then steps forward with his/her left foot, then onto the right again at which point the fielder throws. So, I see the most efficient movement as a 4 step process - 1) Fielder fields the ball 2) At almost the same time as step 1, fielder plants right foot 3) fielder plants left foot and 4) fielder plants right foot and makes the throw. 
• Field the ball with two hands on your right side and then throw on next step - you'll use this movement when you have little or no time to make the play at 1B. It's nearly a do-or-die type moment on a slow roller. How it works is that you field the ball while your left foot is planting on the right side of your body with two hands (for all other plays above, you field with 1 hand). You then exchange and make the throw immediately as/while your right foot is planting. So this is basically a two step process - 1) Field the ball with two hands while your left foot is planted and 2) exchange and throw while right foot plants.

     In any case where you are throwing on the run (the last two points above, not the shuffle step through), your arm angle while throwing is also important. While throwing on the run, you are not going to be able to throw in a straight over-top motion, you're going to have to adjust your arm angle down to an at least three quarters arm angle. ​An example of this arm angle is pictured above - this angle is pretty extreme, but the point is that you will not be throwing straight over the top while you throw on the run. Also notice the tilt of the player's shoulders - his shoulders are not level but are rather tilted at an angle. Incorporate throwing at different arm angles into your practices - this is easily incorporable into your daily throwing routine that usually begins everyone's practices. 

Let me know what you think or if you know of any other coaching points related to throwing on the run. I'd love to hear your input. I'll also be posting several other lessons I learned from the playoffs in upcoming posts, so keep an eye out for them here!

​-- Tom