Outfield Drills

Setting up BP in a manner that they can get live balls off the bat is the single best thing you can do.

In addition, we do some 3-man drills that involve guys in 3-man groups. A "tosser," a cutoff man, and and OF. We roll gb or flip flyballs. We gets times on transfer, etc to make it competitive. 

We do receiver drills where we work over the shoulder and wrong read routes.

90% of what we do, though, is the live bat reads. We don't "shag" in the normally accepted sense ever.

The best workouts are done away from the team. I took my son and a teammate to the field. I hit line drives up the gap, straight at them and over their heads until they dropped from exhaustion.

Anyone with any kind of talent can catch a routine fly or drift to a sky ball up the gap. But can you run to the right place on a shot? The only training is lots of reps. 

The most important decision for an OF is, when do I go for the catch on a ball in front of me or to an angle,  vs. when do I play it on the hop?

The biggest aspect of this is communication between the applicable corner OF (RF or LF) and the CF. 

Generally, the CF makes the decision and makes the call.  If he's going for a shallow OF catch, he has to tell the corner OF that so that the corner OF can immediately take the backup angle.  The idea is that you get the catch if possible, but if not, you yield no additional bases due to the backup.  You thereby get more catches without yielding any additional bases.

Similarly, the CF can tell the corner OF whether the corner OF should go for the shallow OF catch or not.  This will depend in large part on how hard hit the ball is, and thus, whether the CF sees that he can get to the backup slot or not.

For handling balls where there is no backup, the OF has to gauge how hard hit the ball is, and its angle.  A high pop isn't going to get away even if you miss it, so the risk of going for the ball is low.  (Exception:  Astroturf and other hard surfaces can give you that superball hop that creates trouble.)  A hard, low line shot must be approached while always retaining the ability to block the ball, because that one can lead to extra bases if it's missed.

I like to see a decent portion of an early practice devoted to this.  All players can participate.  Typically, the more capable players spend their early years playing IF, P and C positions.  They view OF as the place where the coach tries to hide the kids who can't catch, and they often believe that as long as the ball didn't bounce by them, they did their job.  It's not unusual to get resistance when you ask a kid to move to the OF, as he may see it as an implicit insult.  But getting everyone involved in practicing this does a lot of constructive things.  For one thing, it gets your primary OF's up to speed on how many outs can be had if only they play their position correctly.  It can also help identify who your next best OF's are, for depth purposes.  You might even learn that someone would do well to change positions.  But most of the kids come away from this with a fuller appreciation of how important OF play is, and even if it doesn't end up being their own position, a lot of these kids grow up to become youth ball coaches themselves in time.

Note that we're talking here about the airborn balls that will land in front of the OF unless caught.  Balls over the OF's head or in the gaps involve a different approach and a different practice, as do balls to the foul line sides of your corner OF's.

When you do this, it's actually quite simple.  But when you watch games even at the HS and high travel levels, it's amazing how often a catchable ball is allowed to drop.  Converting those would-be hits into outs is one of the things that differentiates a strong team from one with holes.

Similar to Ironhorse...

Drills included communication, sun balls, timed transfers, do-or-die, footwork/over the shoulder, touchdowns, fielding/transfer mechanic reps, tons of reps with a variety of arches/spins/grounders to each side, over top and in front, and tons of game simulation with live runners where every aspect was covered and broken down as needed.  For most practices, we would pick one or two focus points.