Ron Gardenhire - Good Morning AMerica Drill

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.