I spent the course of 2 days watching Ron Gardenhire run the “Good Morning America Drill” with the Detroit Tigers. The first day was the first day that I saw the drill and was able to get some video of it. The 2nd day, since I was mostly familiar with the workings of the drill, I focused on documenting the different rounds and movements. Attached below is a video of some of the movements (not all) and my notes for how the drill is run.

The drawback of the drill is that you end up having groups of players standing around for several minutes at a time. Also, the way the drill was run at this level was that the ground ball roller gets refilled by a line of 6-7 catchers who relay the ball back to the roller who is running the drill. Both of these points have definite positives for the major league level - you want to give your guys ample rest while avoiding injury. For youth & HS players, I would likely modify this drill to keep the idle players busy and have the roller refill via a bucket while having the receivers (1B) drop their baseballs into empty buckets. What I present here is the “unmodified” drill as it was run by the Tigers.

Setup -
Have infielders at all 4 positions (3B, SS, 2B, 1B).
Have 1 coach as your “roller”
Have a line of players from 1B to the roller to relay/exchange the ball from 1B back to the roller.

Rounds - there are multiple rounds, here’s a breakdown -
Round 1 - consists of several different types of GBs- Conventional groundballs at the player, backhands, backhand bouncers (ball played on one bounce to the backhand), Forehand plays. Throw to 1B after fielding each ball. 3-4 reps on each GB for each player. Rotate through to other positions (SS, 2B). Other position groups wait until you rotate back to them. When you get to the 1B-men, they make DP turns to the SS - roller tosses them a ball in the air, 1B-men turn inside and turn it to the SS. No return throw.
Round 2 - consists of DP turns. Roller provides both convention ground balls and backhands to players. When you get to 2B, you can include forehand spins. 1B hold runner on then catch ball in the air and then turn 2. You can bounce it to the 1B-men as well.
Round 3 - on the run plays. Coach presents a roller that requires an on-the-run play. 1B-men again turn 2.

At some point, you should also have your 1B play deep and receive a deep ball in the air that they then turn to SS — so they turn DPs on the OF-side of the baseline as well, like they’re playing deep on a 1st and 2nd and get a GB where they are throwing on that side of the baseline. 

You can also include other types of GBs, such as glove side spins, for all players. This is shown in the video below. 

Here are a few of my favorite infield drills that I regularly incorporate into my practices. 

Tennis Ball Drill - good competition drill. No gloves, use tennis racket and tennis balls. Hit them at players. If they bobble the ball or miss it, they're out.

Catch & Tag Drill - Reverse pivot and throw to partner. Partner puts tag down and then reverse pivots to partner. Go back and forth for as many as you like. 

Olympic Drill - this is a fun drill to incorporate a lot of reps and work on all types of groundballs. Since you're rolling the ball, you as the coach have the ability to stay close to your players to give feedback. 

In September, I attended a baseball practice at a local Japanese HS in Tokyo. This was at the tail end of a baseball trip to Japan during which I saw several professional games throughout the country.

Here were a few of my observations from watching the practice (I saw about an hour-hour and a half of the workout).

1. Culture of Respect

In Japan, respect for all things is important, and this was noticeable during the workout. After taking infield/outfield, all players bowed to the field and to the coaches. Also, while walking into the workout, all players removed their hats and greeted me as a visitor to their practice session. Also, anytime that a player spoke to a coach, the player would always remove his hat while listening to the coach.

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2. Hustle and communication

Players would hustle from station to station, even during the clean-up after practice. You can see some of the hustle here in this video.

Communication was also evident during a competition that occured later in the practice.

The competition was setup like this -
5 players would start near home plate, closely lined up along 3B line. You’d have a player for each INF position plus a catcher.

Before taking the field, each player would yell something - mostly just random “rah rah” type stuff.

After all the players have said something, they would all take off for their positions. The SS and 2B would both be in the same position at 2B.

The competition would start with the catcher taking the ball and throwing it to 3B, who would then throw to 2B, who then throws to 1B who then throws back to the C. The team would throw around the horn in this manner 3 times (2B and SS alternate receiving throws at 2B). The goal was to complete the throw it around (3 times) within 17 seconds). You can see a video of the compeition below. If the team failed, they would start over from the beginning, starting from where they took the field.

As you can tell from the above, there was a lot of communication/talking/enthusiasm going on while the drill was happening.

The middle school team also practiced at the same time as the HS team - while the HS team was using the infield, the Jr High team would use the outfield and vice-versa.

3. Japanese live batting practice.

Another thing that the teams did during BP was to do a batting practice with a live pitcher and the bases loaded. The runners at 1B and 2B would always steal, working on jumps, while 3B would work on live reads of batted balls. Each batter would have live counts.

Video of the BP session is below.

Other videos of the practice session are below.

Generally, here are some other observations from watching Japanese professional baseball -

• During INF/OF, when hitting to the 1B, never have the 1B throw to 3B. How many times do you see a 1B make a throw from 1B to 3B in a game, yet this is pretty standard in most people’s infield/outfield routine. Instead, have the 1B make a play that is more likely to happen, like starting a double-play to 2B.
• On the throw it around - most coaches will have their 3B finish off the throw it around by flipping the ball back to the pitcher. In Japanese throw it arounds, they would finish it off by having the 3B make a real throw back to the SS. So, on an out at first, if you would do 1B-SS-2B-3B-P, have the players do 1B-SS-2B-3B-SS-3B with the 3B making a real throw to the SS and back to the 3B then have 3B flip it back to the pitcher. Some Japanese teams would have the SS and 3B make multiple throws back and forth between the SS and 3B before returning the ball back to the pitcher.
• When turning two on the INF, don’t forget about your catchers - after the 1B has done his “turn 2”. Roll a ball out in front of HP and have the catcher do a turn 2.

Here are some video of various Japanese professional INF/OF routines -

Here are some other scenes from Japanese baseball -

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. 

   Heard about this drill from Mark Gjormand from Madison HS (VA) at the National High School Baseball Coaches Association convention in Columbus, OH in 2016. I thought it was an interesting, competitive drill that's similar to the "taters" drill that I've outlined here. Thought that I'd share the drill here for your reference and my own future reference.
   You start will a full infield & outfield group. The idea behind the drill is to emphasize perfect throws between the players. First off, the drill will consist of 3 rounds. The ball starts in LF. The LF relays to 3B via the SS. 3B throws to 2B (covering 2B) who then relays to 1B, 1B to C, C throws down to 2B. 2B puts the ball in a bucket near  2B. Round 1 is complete.
   Round 2 is the same as Round 1 except the ball now starts in CF. You throw from CF to 3B via SS, to 2B, to 1B, to C then back to 2B. Drop in bucket. Round 2 complete.
   Round 3 follows the same procedure except that you are now starting in RF. RF throws to 3B via SS, 3B to 2B, 2B to 1B, 1B to C, C to 2B. Drop in bucket. Round 3 complete.
   So, the throw pattern can be simplified like this -
   Round 1: LF - SS - 3B - 2B - 1B - C - 2B (6 throws)
   Round 2: CF - SS - 3B - 2B - 1B - C - 2B (6 throws)
   Round 3: RF - SS - 3B - 2B - 1B - C - 2B (6 throws)

To spice it up a little, you can mandate that the throws be made under a certain time. If any error is made, a new fielding group must replace the current fielding group. 

  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.