Eye on the ball

I use a soft lime green baseball that we call "The timing ball" we use to in on eye on the ball drills in the cage or field. they are cheap and you can pick them up from any sporting good retailer. tennis balls also work. have him identify the ball mixed in with regular baseballs.  The goal is to have him identify the ball then follow the timing ball with his head as it passes the plate to behind him. he then tells you the point where he first recognizes the ball. you will see improvement quickly in his timing and recognition.  I picked this trick up at a college team spring training work out. I use it on my 13 year old.

Hey gindog

Making contact and/or good hard contact to the baseball starts as pitching,throwing and other aspects of the game does, right at the ground level with a good solid athletic stance and a good smooth approach and is carried on up to and through the legs, hips, upper torso on into the arms and lastly on to the very important hands. I would like to view some video's of him batting several times from both sides front and rear, 45 degree angle from the sides with tee, soft toss and{live at the speed at which he has his problems} we need to view whatever the problem/s are to enable us to determine what adjustments need to be made.along with some other suggestions and visualization methods.

Let me know

kom_don

dfervin32@yahoo.com

Just one addition to this. 

My son had a similar problem at around 10 years of age.  He was late on everything and didn't seem to pick up the ball.  If I asked him about it he would tell me, 'Oh yeah, I see it'.  It didn't look like he was having any trouble reading or seeing but he just wansn't picking up the ball early on.  By the time he was 11 he was hitting terribly.

I took him to an opthomologist because it didn't make any sense, he was ripping the ball in short toss and off the tee.  It turned out he had a very slight lazy eye that was effecting his ability to focus on the ball out of the pitcher's hand.  He had to wear glasses for about a year to correct it, especially when he hit but it seemed to do the trick, he doesn't have a problem now.

One drill that my guys did at an early age was call out before hitting the ball, two seam or four seam. If you soft toss from the front side behind a screen and toss underhand with a two seam grip and mix in four seamers your hitter will start to become more focused on reading the spin on the ball, and pick up the pitch earlier.

And it is a fun drill as well.

Bat to heavy?

thanks guys  for some help. What he said said has been the flash cards and looking for a color. He said it help him fine the ball better out of the pitcher hand. He went 10 for 11 with 4 doubles. He had a good weekend with his team come in 2th place.

Check and see which eye is his dominant eye and make the adjustment.

I am new here and just reading through some of the older stuff! I do a couple of things with my son who is a 2016. I have some smaller baseballs that I have put different colored dots on with Sharpies and he calls out the colors after he hits the baseball. The second things is that he calls out either two seam or four seem when I am pitching to him in a cage. Both of these things gets him in the habit of picking up the flight of the ball earlier....hope this helps! 

Could be his timing sequence is just off but sees the ball fine. I always told my son to load when the pitcher loads and to try start his stride about when the pitchers foot landed. This has to be worked on while on deck or watching and timing while the pitcher is facing other teamates.