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 -

   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. 

   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.
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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