ways to coach being aggressive at the plate

Is there a swing the damn bat drill? I would suggest benching kids who don't swing the bat. But I'm guessing having a small school team in northern Maine you have a small roster and limited talent. You have to get in their heads about being aggressive at the plate.

We will do a drill in 2 phases but both in the same manner.  Coaches will throw BP, FB and CB and we will visually extend the zone 2 inches to each part of the plate.  The player must put the ball in play or foul off 3 pitches.  If the player strikes out then they run to the foul poll and back.  The other phase is to actually have pitchers throw live.

I'm with RJM on this.

Chances are they've been doing this from the get-go--since they began playing little league. Practice-drills won't jolt below-average hitters out of deeply engrained live-game habits.  The best you can do is maintain a CONSISTENT aggressive hitting philosophy.  Praise aggressive at-bats and ignore when they chase bad pitches.

thanks you guys. and spot on RJM. Ive ran into at least a few issues that i would like to bench certain kids for but i simply dont have the means in a lot of situations. its tough. I noticed a lack of intensity right from the get go with the kids asked them point blank "have you ever had to try out for a team in any sport? have you ever known what it feels like to have to give your very best effort all the time because you might not even make the team?" the answer was no. In any sport, the numbers are so small that these kids have never even had tryouts. Its just... here is who is willing to play...all 13 of them. 

i like your idea IEBSBL, i think it will reinforce simply putting the bat on the ball and getting it in play. another point ive been trying to reinforce. my kids who K looking the most, are also usually the ones who are swinging for the fences when they do swing. at a low level of comp like ours, just put the ball in play and make them work for the out, lots of teams will make lots of mistakes around here if you simply put them in the position. a K looking is the easiest out and a real morale buster. 

Since it's a small high school are there any girls capable of playing baseball? Are they allowed?  If there's one with ability I believe it would get the boys off their rear ends if a girl started showing them up.

Originally Posted by CoachZ:

My team watches entirely too many strikes! especially strike 3's. Its unreal. I've been talking about being aggressive with 2 strikes all season and sometimes they do it, sometimes they don't. Any tips on drills that might help us be more aggressive at the plate?

CoachZ,

Can you give us some idea about what “entirely too many” means? I’m asking because I’m wondering if you’re getting that impression because of what you perceive or what is actually happening. IOW how are you measuring things?

I produce a couple metrics with one of the main reasons for them being to keep check on this very topic. What do you use to make sure what you think your seeing is really happening?

RJM, there is a girl in the 7th grade (our school building is 7-12 and the MS and HS coaches are all teachers, myself included. So we work really closely together and know all the kids. I help at MS practices regularly and they are having a great season. We at the HS are rebuilding right now but have a promising future for sure. the girl in MS, they made her play softball...kid of disappointing, especially when UMPI (UMaine Presque Isle, just an hour or so away from us) has a female pitcher on their baseball team! dont think any of the current HS girls could keep up. 

Stats, Good point about my perception vs. reality. but i think it actually is too many. We faced pretty good pitcher in a team at the top of our division recently. we had 14 K's as a team, 7 were looking. and its not just that they are watching them, its the type of pitches they are watching. a 2 strike fastball right over the heart of the plate. I mean, in our division, there is very few kids who can really work the plate. Just throwing strikes consistently and in the 70s is a good pitcher, add a curve and most teams are in trouble around here. Kids lay fastballs right over the plate in the middle of the zone all the time around here. I had a kid with a 3 pitch at bat recently: 1st pitch ball up by his eyes, he swung, 2nd pitch right over the plate, called strike 2, 3rd pitch up by his eyes again, swing and miss...should have been a 2-1 count. had another kid have a great 12 pitch at bat, full count, fouled off a few, and then watched strike 3 after a battle.

I honestly think some of them decide whether or not they are going to swing before the pitch. 

I dont even have them take on 3-0 counts most of the time because i want them to get confidence at the plate and swing and put the ball in play. 

Another thing is this, i think there is a direct relationship to how the game is going for us as a whole, and how many pitches the kids watch. if we have a tough inning with an error or 2, and we are down a handful or runs, the bats stop moving and the dugout chatter stops. if we are up, or at least close and are playing the field well, the bats start moving more, the chatter comes around. the kids seem to really get down on themselves and check out of the game at the drop of a hat...super frustrating to see. 

If there's a softball team the girl is probably required by MPA rules to play softball. I thought maybe with the small nature of the school there might not have been a softball team.

i mean, if they were watching a nasty curve, that is 1 thing, but alot of these pitches are fat ones, you know. 

a couple more stats:

ive got a kid who had 4 strikeouts looking in his first 17 at bats and another with 5 in 20 at bats. 

yeah your right RJM. The softball program is actually thriving here right now. Baseball we are rebuilding, they graduated 6 strong, up the middle seniors, 3 of whom pitched year who went to the Eastern Maine Semifinals last year. 

What I've done in the past is literally have team running for every fastball strike they take. (I don't need to argue hitting philosophy on the merits of working counts, hitters pitches, etc, just roll with it.) Doesn't matter if the kid liked the pitch, the ump blew the call, whatever. If it was a fastball that got called a strike we were running for it.

What this did was take all decision making away from the kid, which can be a good thing, and put all the blame for swinging at bad pitches on my shoulders. Kid instantly became much more aggressive at the plate, simply because they could now blame me for forcing them to swing. The difference was immediate.

Once kids felt comfortable being aggressive, I backed off the mandate, and was actually able to coach them on a approach a little more. 

I found that if they won't swing at the pitches they need to, you're wasting your time talking approach. It's like talking to your kid about parallel parking before he's learned to put it in Drive.

Originally Posted by CoachZ:

i mean, if they were watching a nasty curve, that is 1 thing, but alot of these pitches are fat ones, you know. 

Do you chart pitches?

a couple more stats:

ive got a kid who had 4 strikeouts looking in his first 17 at bats and another with 5 in 20 at bats. 

At Bats or Plate Appearances? What about all your other “kids”? Its difficult to judge things like this without having something to reference it to.

Stick with what everyone else put but I've actually had success in giving guys a hit run sign with nobody on.  Find a fastball count where the pitcher cannot nibble but has to bring it in there to force them to swing.

Nowhere near the best solution and it came out of a lot of frustration when I was in similar situation.

thanks 2709, I think that is a quick and easy jump off point. as it is, i havent been giving them the take, even on 3-0, just because I want to see them get the bats moving. but yeah, hit and run on a 2-0, 3-0, or 3-1 is something to try. we have a double header against a super weak team tomorrow. I hope we get out in front early and i can experiment with some stuff like this, and some other lineup stuff ive been pondering. 

Stats, i do not chart pitche types, maybe i will start. when keeping books, i have my managers write pitch numbers of the at bat, to keep track of things like 1st pitch strikes and waste pitches. maybe i will have them chart pitch types instead for a couple games. in my stats provided i was talking about plate appearances. for comparison, my leadoff guy k'd looking 1 time in 23 at PA's, and my cleanup guy 1 time in 20 at PA's. not sure if this puts things into perspective much or not... i will give the books a better look over today. 

Stats, just had a chance to look at your aggressiveness of hitting chart. WOW! really great stuff. I dont have anything close to that put together haha. Do you have a spreadsheet or something set up that you just plug each at bat into after the game, or do you do that stuff all up regularly? Also, what are the SigP and OPS stats towards the far right? Thanks. 

CoachZ,

Thanx for the compliment. I’ll try to answer your questions, starting with the easiest.

SlgP is Slugging Percentage and OPS is Slugging Percentage + On Base Percentage.

I do not use a spreadsheet. When I started doing this stuff, SS’s were woefully less capable than they are now, and I’m an ex-programmer/analyst who dabbled in PC database managers. I wrote a program and used to enter everything by hand after each game, but it got to where it was taking so long, I decided to either quit doing it or come up with a more efficient way. I investigated GameChanger and IScore, but neither would allow me access to my own data, so I decided to convert my stats program to a scoring program that does stats.

And that’s where I sit now. The computer takes care of pretty much everything. If you’re interested, you can go to http://www.infosports.com/scorekeeper/. Look in the blue bar on the left side of the page and you can see pretty much everything I generate regularly. There are more different metrics in the 2014 stats because some of them get to be too big.

awesome, thanks stats, thanks a ton. any team would be lucky to have such in depth info to work with. kudos.

here is what ive done at practice the past couple days. we have a double header with a bottom team in our division today, so hopefully we will have a good chance to put it to work. 

tuesday: we took BP as normal with 1 rule: if the pitch is a strike and you dont swing, you have to run a pole. wouldnt you know it, the kids swing at everything, just in case. either way, its a start towards more aggressive hitting. 

wednesday: BP with 2 rules: if its a strike and you dont swing, you have to run a pole. every 2 balls that you do swing at is also a pole. of course i got a lot of "but what if its a ball, but we drive it deep into the gap?" ...we will talk about that later. the most poles anyone had to run was 2. we also noticed a dramatic increase team wide in the amount of solid line drives hit. huge reduction in pop ups. 

after the activity wednesday we talked a bit about the strike zone more. i had just a few major points:

-why do you think the strike zone is where it is? why is it not higher, lower, further outside... the answer is because pitches within that zone are pitches that we can hit most successfully and for the best quality hit. notice the amount of line drives today? the strike zone is for you, its to make sure that you can be successful by making you swing at pitches that are conducive to success.

-that being said, every person has "their pitch" which may or may be outside of the zone. (insert kids name here) loves the low and in pitch, who am i to take that away from him? in a game, you certainly can swing at that pitch. as long as your taking balls that are not your pitch, and swinging at other strikes even if they are not necessarily yours, provided the proper count. 

-Another big reason for doing this drill was to put some pressure on them. When we are in the lead, we cruise, we are loud and supportive. when we are down, or its close, we usually crumble and the chatter stops. get used to having pressure on yourselves. soon it will be playoffs and each game could be the end of the season, or a huge success. learn to embrace high pressure situations and thrive in them and perform. 

In the course of just a couple days, i noticed a great increase in at least a few kids and their approach at the plate. after we did the BP drill wednesday, i gave each kid 2 at bats with live pitching. 1 player watched strike 1, and then swung and grounded out on a high and inside pitch. i told him it was a poor hit because it was a poor pitch. swing at the previous pitch that was in the zone and youll hit a line drive single to center. next at bat, same strike comes in, and he laces a frozen rope into center....those little victories haha! 

CoachZ,

The one negative comment I have is, in baseball, I’m not a proponent of punishment consisting of doing something that doesn’t improve the unacceptable behavior. IOW, I’d understand making a player take 10 more swings, but running makes no sense to me. But, that’s not an opinion shared by all, and I do understand.

On the thought that being more “aggressive” is better, to me its not a very cut and dried thing. With the current thinking that OBP is the main measure of a hitter’s success, a lot of things have changed in the game. Here’s an example from MLB. Carlos Santana for Cleveland is #2 in walks in the ML, and Nick Swisher for the same team is #14. Santana is batting .159 with an OPS of .628, and Swisher .211 with an ops of .631. I watch most of the Indians’ games, and honestly wonder how many pitches either of them or anyone else takes that could have been put in play, and whether they’d be better off doing that.

But the real problem isn’t for those guys. After all, they’ve already proven they’re among the best hitters in the world. The problem is, when you’re dealing with players at lower levels, doing a lot of waiting is ok for the best hitters, but causes problems for those with lesser abilities. Its really difficult to tell Johnny he needs to be more patient but tell Billy he needs to be more aggressive, so most will either coach to the level of the best player or the worst player because there’s simply not time to coach everyone based on their individual needs.

The whole thing is very complex, and most teams lower than the ML level don’t have the resources to address the complexities. All I can say for sure is, over the last 8 years, the best hitters in our program tend to see the fewest pitches, and I suspect that’s generally true for any amateur team over time.

Thanks for the reply stats. I like your philosophy about making the punishment relevant to the mistake. Ive been thinking about starting a "punishment" thread here, especially since my team is so small and benching kids isnt really an option...gotta get creative. 

good points about the MLB guys, and the guys in your program however, at the level im coaching, the best teams seem to be the ones with fundamental stuff like swinging at strikes and simply putting the ball in play and make the other teams work for their outs...My leadoff batter in the first at bat of the game, or with a new pitcher, is typically the only guy i really want working a deep count, just so the team can get a good look At the pitcher. Your mlb guys may better off being selective because most grounders they hit are sure outs, they gotta wait for their pitched. those stats could be altered by who is batting around them also and getting pitched around and such. very complex indeed. I find it interesting that the kids seeing the least pitches are best hitters. ill have to start looking into that. Thanks for adding to the discussion. Always tons of stuff to think of and several different ways.

Originally Posted by CoachZ:

…good points about the MLB guys, however, at the level im coaching, the best teams seem to be the ones who put the ball in play and make the other teams work for their outs...

That’s exactly what I’m saying, but rather than talking about individual players, you’re talking about teams. Of course the “best” teams will have the “best” hitters, and that kind of goes along with what I was saying about our team.

theres lots of errors on hard hit/routine grounders around here. My leadoff batter in the first at bat of the game, or with a new pitcher, is typically the only guy i specifically want working a deep count...and maybe my 8-9 guy if they are struggling. Your mlb guys are better off being selective because most grou ders they hit are sure outs...very complex indeed. Thanks for adding to the discussion.

Actually, I’ve always had the notions that harder hit balls are easier to field cleanly, but that a whole different kettle of worms and could be a thread in itself. I wish there was a way to score a “routine” grounder as opposed to a “hard” or “slow” grounder and be fairly accurate about it, but it would be really difficult to do that at the amateur level. My PERCEPTION is, most errors come on balls that are hit in such a way that the fielder has to hurry, like slowly hit balls or balls the fielder makes a great play to get.