Using the Batting Cages

With the limited number of Westside Fields, the batting cages have become a separately scheduled team function just like fields in the Westside Community. Used to it's maximum potential, the batting cage is actually a more effective tool than a field. Fielding skills can be polished, pitching can be practiced, and of course hitting can be perfected.

However, some coaches fail to involve enough players or think it's a one-at-a-time exercise. Without careful planning, your practice could turn into a a game of hide and seek. Here is a suggested regimen to follow when you reserve the cage. Extra materials are necessary. They include golf wiffle balls, plastic wiffle balls, batting tee, baseballs, and a 30-inch wood dowel rod (like a round curtain rod-Go to Home depot and have one cut).

The Cubs use 4-5 hitting stations with 8-10 Cubs involved at all times. Each Cub visits every station every 4-5 minutes. After 4-5 minutes of heavy, concentrated swinging action they welcome a 4-5 minute break.

Batting Drills

Station 1 - Use the batting tee. Have a coach or parent place a ball on the tee and hit into the cage fence (outside the cage). The batting Tee is one of the best hitting tools you'll find and is used by Major League ball-players. Coaches can watch their form and they can work on their swing path. Have each player hit 20 -30 balls, as quickly as you can place them on the tee. Stop only to make suggestions to swing form. Once all the balls have been hit, have both players (the player hitting and the player waiting to hit) pick up the balls.

Station 2 - Large wiffle ball soft (side) Toss- Purchase 20-30 large wiffle balls (baseball size) and stand beside the player (out of the swing path) toss balls to the player ( you will be standing outside the left batters box for a right-handed batter. The player should hit the balls into the fence. Once the drill is over both players should pick up the balls and prepare for the next player.

Station 3 -Golf wiffle Balls - Repeat Station 2 using smaller golf wiffle balls and dowel rod. We usually hit against the concession stand since the golf balls do no damage and will go through the chain link fence. The dowel is a great eye-hand-coordination tool. Once they learn to hit a golf ball with a dowel (and they will before the first drill is over), hitting a baseball will seem like hitting a basketball.

Station 4 - The cage - Use the pitching machine and serve 3 dozen balls. Once the drill is finished, all players should enter the cage to pick up balls. This maximizes your cage time.

You also can shorten the distance between the pitching rubber and home plate and perform coach pitch. For "old" coaches, shortening the distance can add 30 mph to your fastball and forces the players to speed up their reaction time. A quick swing with lightening-fast bat speed is the fundamental you want to teach in this drill. Vary pitch location so the player doesn't use the same swing path on each swing. Early in the year a player may hit only 4-5 balls in this drill. However, as the year progresses, make sure you have a net to protect the pitcher. By shortening the distance and speeding up swing speed, your players can wait longer on judging whether a pitch is a hittable ball during game situations. Master this skill with 8 players and your team will bring home a County Championship.

Station 5 - Pop-up net - we have a pop-up batters net in the Coaches room. Do soft toss with real baseballs.

On Logan's Spiders Travel Team, each boy gets about 300 swings per practice, twice each week in the cage. We have 5 indoor cages. Our Westside Youth get about only 300 to 400 swings (total) from the first February practice to the first game TOTAL, using only the fields (15 practices 20-30 pitches maximum per practice), as our only training tool. At the beginning of the Spiders Spring Training, one of our Westside Youth, who also plays on the team, was not accustomed to swinging 300 times in a practice. His ribs and muscles were so sore, his family thought he had a kidney ailment. However, he has turned into a very fine hitter, now.

Station 6 - The Cubs also set up a zip line which is a rubber ball with two nylon lines which pass through a hole drilled in the middle. One end of the line is clipped to the fence; the other end has two handles. When the handles are spread apart the ball zips down the line and the boys hit the ball back to the parent operating the handles. The Cubs love this drill; so do the parents. The operator can move the line and "throw" curve balls, bouncing knuckle balls, or spread the line more quickly and send a 90 M.P.H. fast ball screaming down the line. There is always an endless stream of Cubs standing in line waiting for their turn at this drill. If there are no parents to staff this drill, the players have established their own rules of etiquette for choosing who gets to operate the zip line.

There are dozens of hitting tools that parents have purchased to help their children with hitting; hitting sticks, poles with elastic lines that you hit and wrap and unwrap as you hit the ball, batting tees, swing path gates, etc. Have your parents bring them and work as many batting stations as you can. The more swings your players get, the better they will get as the season progresses. Usually if a parent brings this tool, they will run the drill, which gets more coaches involved in the teaching process. More importantly the boys (and girls) have fun! The Cubs offer cage practice as an optional practice. However, we rarely have players miss these practices because they are busy performing a drill for 90-minutes. They sleep well after a cage practice.

Also, the batting cages can be used to work your pitcher and catcher and provide live-arm batting instruction to batters. In this instance you would still use the 4-5 station hitting instruction for warm-ups and instruction areas, but players get a better feel for game pitching situations.

I have never been an advocate of the pitching machine, because the flight path of the machine pitch (dimpled) ball is flat and consistent. You may use baseballs in the pitching machine, but the tires will wear the baseball threads. It is wind-resistance on the threads of a baseball that produce irregular flight paths (curve ball, slider etc). There are batting machine balls that can be purchased which have raised (simulated) threads, which I use for Logan. However, the pitching machine is a great tool for swing timing and maximum productivity.

The cage is a better place to practice live-arm hitting than a field because it is more time-efficient. There, also, are fewer safety concerns in the cage, since no players should be in the cage chasing butterflies or digging trenches in the infield (not paying attention). Rather than throwing a pitch, waiting for the hit ball to be fielded and returned to the mound, the cage allows you to continue pitching and leave the balls where they are hit. After all balls have been thrown, all team players should enter the cage and retrieve all the hit balls. During a typical field practice you "lose" players who wait all practice in the field and have only 1 ball hit to them.

Using this batting cage practice format, allows every player to hit twice in the cage in a 90-minute practice and twice each at 4 separate batting stations. Each player will get 300 or more swings during a 90-minute practice.

Remember in Rec ball, Regular season wins/losses mean nothing. When you get to the County Championship Tournament every Team's record is 0-0. Your team can lose every game it plays and win the County Championship. List every player in your line-up. Bat every player in every game, and by the time the Tournament rolls around, your team will be hitting like the 1927 Yankees.

Fielding Drills

The cage also can be used for fielding drills. Divide your squad in half and put two parents in the middle of the cage hitting ground balls to the opposite ends of the cage. Have a coach at each end, outside the cage and make sure all your players are at the cage watching as players field ground balls and are listening as you provide instruction. Your players will learn from the mistakes of others and will listen as you make corrections. The cage is actually a better teaching tool for fielding fundamentals than a baseball diamond, since players are concentrated in a smaller area and it is easier to get and keep their attention. Dividing the group into two groups of 4-5 players outside the cage at each end (1 in the cage at each end) makes its much more manageable, as well.

Additionally, if you prefer, you can use the football field to hit fly balls. Fly balls are always tough at this age. You don't need a baseball diamond to work on fundamentals, which is what we do.

Until we get adequate facilities (if ever), we will have to learn to maximize the facilities we currently have. The batting cage is being under-utilized, if you are simply sending in one player at a time and other players have idle time on their hands, you are not maximizing time in the cage.

If you cannot afford the extra golf balls and wiffle balls, and dowel rod, the Association will purchase these and keep them in the Coaches room.

In reality, for future consideration, we can build batting cages for a lot less money than fields. Fields are actually only needed for 45-minutes (rather than 90-minutes) to work players on fielding, relays, double plays etc. After 45-minutes, we begin to get stale with our practice routine. We really don't necessarily need a field to work on fundamentals (catching fly balls, learning proper fielding position for ground balls). It is our coaches that believe they must have a field to practice. Some of the best baseball games I ever played as a kid were with 15 other neighborhood kids on the dirt road where I grew up. Of course, there were no coaches around, which probably made it better.

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