Bunt Drills

I took the contact drill of the practice golf ball and stick and used it for bunting, then mixed in the incentive of push-ups for missed contact.

Fundamentally the 1st week of fall practice we start every one on a knee amd have them start bunting. They can not get off a knee until they show they can sacrifice bunt.

Game wise there are 2 games we play. We set up cones indicating where a succesful sac bunt each way would be and a succesful drag or push will be.

Game 1...for every succesful bunt they get a positive and for every unsuccesful bunt the team gets a negative. If the players are in the positive then their is no running if they are in the negative they have 1 90 ft. sprint for every negative. Round 1 (Sac up the 3B line) Round 2 (Sac up the 1st base line) Round 3 (drags) Round 4 (pushes)

Game....2 The field is set up in the exact same manner and we have a tournament set up just like the NCAA tournament. Before the 1st tournament the coaching staff gets together and ranks all of the bunters. After the 1st one the rankings are based off the previous tournament. Final 4 gets Gatorades with the winner getting lunch. When we do this each player will get his 4 bunts as opposed to rotating players after every bunt.

I think some of it is just focus. I know I've added a pressure bp to our practice that has helped a ton.

It is like the validation bp we've read about except I put more pressure on the bunt since in order to get ALL their pluses, they must get down the sac (to whichever side I tell them). If they do, they get credit for the executed situation they had. If they don't, they lose it all. At the end, there is team punishment for the situations they don't get (they hit in groups of 4 - that is their team).

With playoffs, the pressure will be more. I believe that the more pressure I can put them under in practice the better they will be in that pressure spot in a game.

As far as the fundamentals, we work on that a lot during the early part of the year and then move towards game type situations as the year goes on.

If any of you read ESPN magazine this is where I got this from...the Cubs did this in spring training.

Bunting bracket. Put all of your players into a NCAA march madness type bracket going head to head. Mark spots/areas (using cones, spray paint, etc) on your infield for points based on good bunts. i.e. 40 pts for right down the line and halfway to 1st or 3rd, 30 pts down the line and 1/4 way down the line, 20 points down the line but closer to the mound, 10 points for anything in the home plate circle.

Get 6 bunts, player with the most points wins that matchup and moves on. I buy the overall winner lunch that day. Hopefully this all makes sense, there is a diagram that goes with it if you can find the magazine....here is a link to picture and excellent explanation from the magazine.

http://espn.go.com/blog/chicag...bunting-fun-for-cubs

Do what teams did for over 100 years and managed to have better bunter and fielders then they do now. Have the players play PEPPER!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDFG6CWH_gE

quote:

Originally posted by Stats4Gnats:
Do what teams did for over 100 years and managed to have better bunter and fielders then they do now. Have the players play PEPPER!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDFG6CWH_gE

We do it almost every practice for a bit. I've let the early kids play until we start warmups and then sometimes they take it on themselves to play a bit after we're done. Brought 500 back too a couple practices ago.

quote:

Originally posted by Coach Bob:
We do it almost every practice for a bit. I've let the early kids play until we start warmups and then sometimes they take it on themselves to play a bit after we're done. Brought 500 back too a couple practices ago.

Well kudos to you for doing it! Here’s what I know. I’ve been scoring HS games here since 2000, and I’ve never once seen any team play pepper before a game. For that matter, I’ve attended more than a couple practices, but I’ve never seen it there either.

I don’t know what else you do to enhance bunting or fielding, but do feel your teams are in general superior to your opponents in those areas?

500? Please enlighten me.

I've used bunting on a knee which works pretty good. Had them bunt on chairs, use lacrosse sticks, pepper, thunder sticks.

One of the biggest problems I've seen is they are so focused on getting out of the box-especially on bunt for hits but also on sac's. I've mixed it into our batting practice and our bunts have gotten tremendously better. At the end of every round they must leave with a skill (sac/drag/push) THEN run to 1st. If they run before they bunt or bad bunt, they must run it out all the to the RF foul pole. It's helped them focus on seeing the ball down, then getting out of the box.

quote:

Originally posted by Warning Track:

One of the biggest problems I've seen is they are so focused on getting out of the box-especially on bunt for hits but also on sac's.

IMO this is definitely the worst flaw.
Nagging your players about this will reap dividends.

Originally posted by Warning Track:

One of the biggest problems I've seen is they are so focused on getting out of the box-especially on bunt for hits but also on sac's.


IMO this is definitely the worst flaw.
Nagging your players about this will reap dividends.

I also agree on both ends. In fact when we do bunt drills or mix in bunts during BP I will not even let them leave the box on a drag or a push.

quote:

Originally posted by Warning Track:
…One of the biggest problems I've seen is they are so focused on getting out of the box-especially on bunt for hits but also on sac's. …

What a prophetic post! The afternoon you posted that, I was scoring a game and saw a 1st for me. One of our hitters, a fleet-footed lefty, got called out for bunting the ball with one foot completely out of the box. He was in such a big hurry to get to 1st, he couldn’t wait.

We have what we call "Kill Zone." We use our side field and actually paint a box where we want bunts placed. We have an area marked "Kill zone" which we beleive a sac bunt placed here will not only get the runner advanced but could result in safe at first or an overthrow. We also mark "Safe" in boxes just short and just passed it, however they are thinner boxes. Our thought here is this is a good sac bunt (positive). We use this as a station, using livearm or a machine, and the kids keep points, 3 pts in kill zone, 1 in "Safe" zone. Often my infield coach takes all the infielders over, seperates our 1's from our 2's, and works his bunt coverage at the same time. Get your defense working plus the kids get some competition either scoring more points with good bunts (positive) or retiring the bunters to stop them from scoring points (positive). When done on the game field, we use flat cones. The one thing we have to watch is the defense crashing too soon. If they do we allow a slash...working something else!!