Anybody have the progressions of all the base running scenarios they have to cover before games begin? Trying to see if anyone already has one. Or some really good effective drills.
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What age/level?
14
You could go down a rabbit hole with base running. You could do 1 base during a practice.
First base you could cover infield hit balls with a breakdown. You could practice rounding bag on singles with every intention of going 2. Once on first, we always preached aggressive leads. Far enough away you had to slide back. Our biggest pet peeve is not advancing enough when ball is in dirt. We would set up bow net and from the stretch would throw balls in the dirt. Doesn’t matter where the ball ends up. Always tell them to watch angle of pitch out of pitcher’ s hand. You get just a couple kids to buy into that you will win a bunch of games. Split into 2 teams with one in field and one hitting/base running for a hit and run game. Set up cones to left side and right side. Also, set up a 1000 pointer lane like in skee ball. Probably a small lane towards to second baseman and one towards SS for a lefty. Score it accordingly. Challenge the kids with tough pitches out of the zone. Lose points with no swing. Lose points when baserunner doesn’t peek 2 steps in after steal.
At 2nd we worked straight up lead and 2 out lead. Secondary lead real important at 2B because you can cut a tremendous amount of distance to 3rd and home for that matter. While coming off their secondary, Hit ground balls to their left and right. Anything to their right, hold your line. Anything behind them, run like hell. Practice pickoff plays with your middle infielders and pitchers. Have pitchers mix up going home, turning inside to bag, or reverse daylight play. This gives the kids some lead off scenarios. You could do angle of pitch here as well. View from 2B on a pitch in the dirt is tough. We would put in three outfielders to work tagging up from 2nd. Balls hit to dead center over to left field foul line, go halfway. Anything right of dead center you were looking to tag. Practice can of corn fly balls and ones where fielder is on the run. If we had a fly ball where OF’s body was going away from them, we wanted an aggressive tag. Your aggressive guys will do it on the left fielder when going away from them.
At 3B, we would do foul territory leads and aggressive walking lead. Use Angle of pitch again. We wanted momentum always going to next base. Never on the heels wanting to return to base we came from. You can get a lot runs on aggressive 3rd baserunning. You could have infield up and back. Infield up see it through. Infield back, hard right way unless back to pitcher. Give them looks back to the pitcher.
There are still tons to do. Lead offs and reading pitcher and when to check for 3rd base coach on advancements. When you have a competitive sceanario opportunity, always break into teams. When using tag up drill, we had the OF, SS and 3B in there(C for play to home) This will give you as close to game speeds as possible. Hope this helps. Sure do miss it. This is my first post and this really felt good. Thanks.