Soft Toss hurting swing?

Brian,

I have also noticed that lots of players tend to change their swing during soft toss from the side.
I have seen them actually move their shoulders and arms as they track the ball to contact.

My son has been seeing a hitting coach that has also expressed some concern about soft toss from the side. He only likes the "flips" from 15 or 20 feet in front of the hitter.

CWM

soft toss has to be done correctly to be effective. The feeder needs to be slightly in front. He needs to give the hitter a timing cue (I tell the feeder to show the ball, swing arm down and back up the same speed every time). Most importantly, the feeder cannot allow the hitter to get into a rhythm. This creates bat wrapping among other bad habits.

I front toss all my kids, 12-15 feet from the screen. We work in/mid/away and a random toss drill. I don't like soft toss from another player. If you must, you have to make sure it is done correctly as poor swings in a soft toss drill will wreck a good hitter, IMO.
GED10DaD

I've never been a fan of soft toss. I prefer front toss. If space or a screen is an issue, do it with pickle balls or golf whiffle balls.

CWM- are shoulders not suppose to move in swing?

What I meant by that is I have seen (usually younger) kids "track" the ball with thier shoulders and upper body. Usually only if the tosses aren't relatively straight. Instead of keeping their head and torso up they will start lunging forward and back.

Mine has done soft toss from in front, from behind a screen 20' in front and tossed from 10' behind him. His mechanics do not change from one drill to the next. The purpose of drills is to create opportunities to master a repeatable swing. If a hitter is thrown off by soft toss how much more will he be thrown off by an 89 MPH fastball followed by a 78 MPH curve in the dirt?

The drill is not the problem here, it is the mechanics of the hitter that are not consistant.

Wow - great topic. I have been noticing that too much soft toss was having a really negative impact on the swing and hitting. Caused the hips to get lazy and not explode, the hands to jerk back too much and the shoulder to dip a bit - great if you want to go from hitting line drives to hitting fly balls to right field! Some may disagree but I am sharing my observations.

A drill is designed to create an opportunity to correct mechanical flaws in a swing. Soft toss is a drill. Done properly a hitter should be able to hit line drives gap to gap depending on placement of the ball.

If a player is hitting pop ups while doing soft toss, the drill is not to blame. The hitter and the individual attempting to instruct the hitter very well may be.

There is no reason to suspect that a ball tossed to a player top hit, in and of itself, is going to cause a hitters mechanics to be ruined.

Again, if you can not maintain your mechanics on a ball tossed to you from any location (particularly front or side) how can you expect to hit adjust from a fastball to a change-up?

The premise does not hold up. A drill when done correctly should not create problems, but fix them.

Every instructor that I have seen or dealt with, will include soft toss as a method of developing and maintaining a high level swing.

If a hitter develops a "lazy" attitude, or gets into a habit of just going through the motions, that is between the hitters ears and needs to be corrected. The game is about repetition and doing things the best way possible on every swing.

floridafan - I should expand my post. On my sons HS (JV) team, coach ( more like a manager) does not thrown BP so the kids hit in the cages instead - they'll do bucket after of bucket of soft toss to each other. They got really good at hitting soft toss! Problem is some kids have been hitting worse then at the start of the season. Some great line drive hitters have been hitting poorly. I agree soft toss itself is a good drill but too much soft toss and not much else is bad.

In that case I agree that there is little benefit...unless the hitter is well disciplined and has a routine that he can follow while having his team mate toss to him.

For a player that really has little or no clue, this is a waste of time. As any drill would be without proper instruction.

It dosen't matter what it is really...Long toss throwing pop flys will not have the impact that throwing on a line will have. Fielding grounders without attention to proper foot and glove work will not improve a players skills either.

A disciplined player that has a routine can make each of these drills work for them. Again it is not the drill at fault, but the approach the player takes to the drill. Proper instruction is a pre-requisite to get the benefits that any drill can provide.

Again, too much of anything will produce lazy results eventually. I agree with you there...

I know this post was about the pros and cons of soft toss....I was just wondering if kids still use a hitting Tee.

I once read that a lot of major league players go back to the "T" when they get into slumps...they perfect way to work on their swing...

dad43 - I agree with you on the T. Great way to get back to basics.

I always found softtoss messed me up some how, non of my college teammates who were good hitters did soft toss. T work and front toss in my opinion are the best ways to go

Floridafan is exactly right. You practice like you play and you play like you practice. Your approach to evey drill needs to be focused as if your in the game. Whaling away at a ball just because the coach isn't there spoon feeding you the correct swing is the players fault. High school players should be grown up enough to handle doing a drill by themselves with out the coach baby sitting. We hit off the T, then soft toss, followed by BP in the cage or on the field. It works great for my teams. No matter where you toss the ball from if your swing approach stinks so do you.

I like doing soft toss every once in a while - but I do it slightly in front of the hitter(maybe in line with first base), not directly facing him. I like to mimic the actual pitch as best I can without getting hit. Do most of you do the same thing?