Outfields Zone
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The Grass Is Actually Greener In The Outfield
by Dave
Monday, March 06, 2006
Outfielders get no respect. There is a presumption early on that all the fun is to be had inside the pitchers circle, behind the plate or just anywhere in the infield. That may actually be true in the early years of rec ball but, over time, a good portion of the real action occurs out beyond where the skin ends and the green grasses begin. Let's take a look at some of the most important outfield skills and a few drills meant to strengthen them. I'm going to approach this from the earliest years and then move on to ones meant for older girls.
Beginner
Outfield skills are very different than those learned at other positions but in the early years they consist of all the basic fundamentals like throwing and catching. Before you move on to more involved skills, those who are destined to be put out to pasture need to work on throwing with a proper motion which will put the least amount of stress on the elbow and shoulder while generating the strongest, most accurate throw. But that's a subject for another day, one which should be emphasized by all coaches with all players at all levels, but one we don't have room to deal with here.
One of the most important fundamental skills all outfielders must possess is the ability to catch the ball. I'm talking about 7, 8, 9 even 10 year old girls here. They must be taught how to catch a ball properly. The first aspect to catching is the part of the body you use to catch a ball. That would be your eyes. Girls must be taught from the get go that they must keep their eyes on the ball at all times. This is an important emphasis point for all coaches. It sounds rudimentary to you but that's because you have been catching balls for decades and decades. When working with young girls, you must dig deeper into your experience than what is most obvious to you today.
Secondly, you catch the ball, to the extent possible, using both hands. This is not because two hands are better for catching a ball than one. It is because A) balls can pop out of mitts and having another hand there can prevent dropping the ball and B) you are going to have to remove the ball from the mitt anyway to make a throw back into the infield so you might as well have the throwing hand ready anyways. Another skill you can teach involves using the throwing hand to shade the sun but in any event, both hands should be high in the air when making a catch. Coaches, don't allow your girls to catch with one hand unless they are reaching for a ball they cannot get in front of. That brings us to an another important point. To the extent possible, you want your players to move their bodies so they line up with the ball trajectory. You don't want players to develop the habit of reaching for the ball out of laziness. It takes constant vigilance but this is one of the most important skills you can teach your kids.
Thirdly, you catch a ball below your waist with the pocket of the glove pointing skyward but you catch all other balls with the fingers pointed up. If you do this and ever drop the ball out of the mitt, your throwing hand should be there to complete the catch. Early on this might be the most difficult skill to teach. The way to do it is to use safety balls (the soft spongy kind), show your kids that being hit by the ball is not going to hurt, then throw little bloops slightly above their heads and force them to catch the ball with the fingers up. As an aside, a very good drill for young girls to learn catching in general is to play catch with a soft ball bare handed. This engenders hand-eye coordination and gives girls confidence that they can catch. You don't want to start an 8-9 year old practice with all your girls playing catch with each other. You, the coach throw to the girls and have them throw to you. At some point, if you've done your job correctly, your girls will be confident and capable enough to catch by themselves.
Slightly Advanced Beginner
So you've taught throwing skills to all your players and now they can catch pretty well. I assume you've also taught infield ground ball fielding skills too and now you are ready to do some outfield specific skills. The first thing I want to say here is that there are not a huge number of fly balls in the outfield in the early years but you do need your girls to learn to field balls on the ground in the outfield so this is a good place to start. If you watch youth rec games and see balls which end up in the outfield, you will likely notice that most of the outfielders simply stand and watch until the ball stops. So a good place to start discussing outfield play is to tell your girls that all outfielders must run towards where the ball is going until they are sure somebody else is going to get it.
Secondly, the way to chase a ball in the outfield is different than it is in the infield. In the infield, you want your girls to keep their hips and shoulders square to homeplate as they cross step to the point of meeting the ball (obviously until you work balls in the holes or do backhand skills). In the outfield, you want to teach girls to turn their hips and shoulders to the direction they are running while keeping their head and eyes faced in the direction of the ball. A good drill for young outfielders is to have them run 40 yard sprints in a direction perpendicular to you while keeping their eyes on you. Do about 5-10 repetitions for each girl once a week or every other week. This should take no more than 10-15 minutes if you have ten girls running this drill.
It is important to emphasize that the girls are not running towards the ball but running to where they expect the ball to be. This is learned through experience so after a few iterations with just running sprints - no ball involved - you can modify the beginner outfielder drill to add chasing the ball. I suggest you set up a cone or some other marker at the 40 yard distance from the starting point then roll the ball towards that while the girls are running their sprints. Later on you can hit the ground balls using a bat to get a more realistic experience and you can do away with the forty yard aspect and a marker. the thing to make sure you do with anyone who is going to be in the outfield is make sure A) they are running after balls, B) they are running to where they expect to meet the moving ball, C) they turn their hips and shoulders to that meeting point, and D) they are keeping their eyes on the ball - turned inwards, not looking where they are running.
A good way to reinforce this is to take two sets of girls into the outfield, one in center, the other in left. One girl from each group at a time takes up position and then you roll or hit balls between them. Both girls race towards where they think the ball will be when they get there. Once you have run this drill a few times, you want to introduce the concept of backing each other up. Obviously you are not always going to hit or throw the ball exactly in between the two players. And just as obviously, one girl or the other is going to be the faster runner. Tell both sets of girls that at the point where they can judge the other girls is going to get to the ball first to modify their running to run about 15 feet in back of the girl who is going to get to the ball first. So the effective outfielder drill is with two spots in the outfield and a ball thrown or hit between them, both players pursue the ball and one judges herself to become the back up fielder. take care that one girl is not always making the play and the other performing the back up. I think you can handle this aspect of things as you see fit. Just don;t allow wallflowers to get stuck to the wall.
As far as actually fielding the outfield ball on the ground goes, I have seen a large number of coaches to teach girls to go down on one knee to field a ball. I disagree. I don't see how actually retrieving the ball on the ground is really any different in the outfield than it is in the infield except that in the outfield, the speed is usually diminished and diminishing. I don't buy into the notion that an outfielder gains anything by going to one knee but I won't argue with those who advocate it. The only thing I see different about outfielding is there is no need of placing the hand up in front of the face as in the "alligator" position since a fielder should not be waiting for the ball to come to her. On a ball to hit to either side of a fielder, she runs to meet the ball, arriving as the ball does. She should use two hands but there is not the need to put one hand in front of the face. The throwing hand goes with the mitt to retrieve the ball.
If a ball is hit right at a girl, she will need to "charge the ball" by which I mean, she should be moving towards it. Teach early outfielders to take short choppy steps - not to run with long strides. Ball which get past early outfielders often do so because of a lack of timing on the part of the running-all-out fielder. This problem can be alleviated by teaching girls to run short choppy strides on balls hit right at them. You can drill this by simply rolling balls out to the outfielders and make them learn through experience that short strides are better. On these sorts of plays, the shoulders and hips must be square to home like they are in infield drills and girls should be taught to take fewer steps toward the ball than they think they should. Have your outfielders, one at a time, stand in leftfield while you stand at the edge of the dirt. The player assumes ready position and then begins taking short choppy steps towards you but stops when you roll the ball right at her, at which point she goes down like an infielder with waist and knees bent, butt above the knee, glove down by the ground and throwing hand with the glove. Now move back to around third base or a little closer to home and roll balls out to the fielder who begins moving as soon as you roll the ball but stops and prepares to field the ball as soon as it clears the dirt and is rolling on grass. As an aside, because the ball and grass interact, it is almost impossible to roll a ball precisely to the fielder but this doesn't change the drill or the skill. Girls approach the ball hit right at them and make little adjustments as they see the ball slightly to their left or right just as infielders do.
Advanced Advanced Beginner
So we've covered grounders for beginner outfielders and now it's time to move on to fly balls. The skills are not very much different than they are for grounders. But obviously the ball is flying.
The first thing you want to teach your fielders is three words, "MINE, MINE, MINE" on all fly balls. Start out with a game of "catch" where you are 30 feet from the girl in the drill. Toss a short popup to her. She yells "mine, mine, mine" and catches the ball. After each girl has had three turns, throw the ball a little higher and to her side. Again, "mine, mine, mine" followed hopefully by a catch. The next kind of drill is to make the fielder run for the ball the same way they did for the grounder, hips and shoulders in the direction being run while head and eyes following the ball, and, of course, "mine, mine, mine." I just cannot say that enough. And neither can outfielders.
Your next drill will be to place outfielders in two fields, say center and left, and then throw the popup between them. The girls run and when one decides she can get to it, she calls it and the other girls should move to a backup position well behind the girl making the play. It is drastically important to teach your girls to honor the one who first makes the call. This will help avoid injuries due to collisions in games and will teach teamwork since, lets face it, somewhere, sometime, the fielder making the call is going to miss the ball and the girl who backs up effectively is going to save bases, perhaps runs, and feel really good about helping the team. If you see a girl call the ball too early, stop the drill and point out the error. If you see one girl give up on the ball because she is sure the other is going to make the play, stop the drill and make her go again. How many times do you see a can-a-corn popup where one outfielder is clearly going to make the catch and right at the end of the play you see the other fielder run behind the one making the catch. I don't care if you are taking the US National Softball Team or the Major League All-Star Game, outfielders must back each other up on every play. Now is the time to teach them that.
Intermediate
We've gone over some basic outfielding skills dealing with ground balls and flies. We've discussed some drills you can use for young girls to prepare them to play the outfield. Now it is time to step it up a bit and talk about some more advanced drilling. The skills remain the same but more difficult drilling is called for. The first drill is an angular pursuit drill. The coach is standing around second base with a player positioned about 30 feet in front of the coach on the outfield grass. She runs diagonally towards the foul pole and, after she gets about 30 feet, the coach throws a pop or line drive type throw beyond her forcing her to run hard to make the catch. Just as with the little kids, make sure her hips and shoulders are square to the direction being run while the head is turned to the thrower, eyes on the ball. Of course, when the trajectory of the ball is determined, the hips and shoulders will take that running direction and the head and eyes will follow the ball. Repeat this drill at least ten times per girls.
Now you are ready for a change of direction drill. In the same setup as before, the player runs towards the foul pool but the coach allows her to run further - say 60 or 70 feet, then the coach throws the ball behind her, she alters her position by turning back towards the coach and then in the new direction. You can vary this drill by making multiple changes of direction based upon the direction the coach is pointing and then throwing. You can also change the direction you are throwing randomly to cause a more real world experience.
Here's another change of direction drill for you involving two coaches, one at second, the other at third. The player in the drill stands about thirty feet in front but slightly to the left of the coach at second base. She begins running to a point about halfway between third base and the foul pole and the coach at second throws the ball. After she catches the ball and returns it quickly to the coach at second, she now runs out towards centerfield the other way and the coach at third throws in her direction. After a few iterations of this drill, start the next player into her motion as soon as the coach at second receives the ball so two girls are fielding in opposite direction simultaneously. The mayhem caused by running two plays simultaneously is a good lesson for any fielder.
Advanced Intermediate
OK, so we've discussed fielding the ball but we've said little about the fundamentals of moving from ball retriever to making the play back into the infield. I think it is fair to say we are all familiar with the term :crow hop" as it relates to a fielder making a throw. This is particularly important with respect to outfielders where a strong throw is often required. Outfielders need to work on the transition from fielding a ball to crow hop to throwing. For balls on the ground this is fairly simple. If you go back to the drill where we hit or threw the ball directly to the outfielder, all you need to do is add making the throw. For righty throwing fielders, the action of picking the ball up (similar to what an infielder does) is immediately followed by a step with the right foot where the instep is pointing to the throwing direction. That's the hop which is then followed by the throw. So a righty outfielder would have slightly more weight on her left foot as she is retrieving the ball which allows her to hop to the right foot.
When discussing throws from the outfield, I think I see more inexperienced outfielders try to make long throws by arcing the ball upwards. There is no question that throwing a ball upwards at a 45 degree angle to the ground will maximize its distance. But please don't teach your outfielders to throw like this. It is far better to teach infielders to go out and pursue a cut off throw than it is to teach outfielders to throw the full distance by throwing at an upwards angle.
Sometimes you need to make a full distance throw as in the circumstance of a runner tagging up at third, but throwing at a 45 degree angle is still wrong in these circumstances. This is a throw for heroes who dream of winning the game by making a perfect throw to home with no hops. The right place to aim a throw is right at the cutoff person's head or slightly above it. The idea is to hit the cutoff person in the head and if this results in an angle of more than 25 degrees, your cutoff is not out far enough. Even on a throw to home with the winning run coming in from third, the place for the throw is the cutoff person's head. As a player who has been involved with many a tag plays at home, I can tell you that it is far better for a ball to hop two or three times in the infield than it is to try and jump to retrieve the ball and then make the tag. Make your outfielders throw low and on line with the bases. Teach your infielders and catcher to get used to throws hopping on the infield and making tags from there. Don;t teach your outfielders that they have to make the throw to the bases without hops.
One of the tricks to learning good fundamentals is a lot of drilling. Live hit balls is great for an outfielder to gain experience. But before you do that, you need a lot of drilling of fundamentals so an outfielder does the right thing in a fundamental sense every time she is hit the ball. You should keep drilling the thrown ball drills throughout the season to enforce good fundamental skills. But that having been said, let's move on to live hit ball drills.
After the fundamentals have been ground into an outfielder's head much of what is gained in practice is the experiential part of outfielding. You need to see a lot of different trajectories and hit speeds in order to become a truly skilled outfielder. Simply hitting ball after ball to outfielders will not get that done. You have to try to spray the ball around, hit line drives and pop flys, etc. And each of your fielders needs to gain experience in each of the three outfield positions. It is best if you can have both a righty and lefty hitting practice fly balls since each offers different spins to balls hit to the various fields. Also while the lack of practice space may force you to hit flys to your outfielders from a point along the foul line, say between third and the foul pole, that's not the real trajectory of hit balls during the game. if you have enough space to take over a whole field from time to time. Hit balls to your outfielders from home plate as this provides a more valuable experience. And because all hitters hit balls differently, if you are running a machine or pitcher pitched batting practice on the field, it is often valuable to have your outfielders out there shagging flys and line drives off live bats. Do your drills for fundamentals but the more live balls a fielder can view, judge, and run down, the better. I say this from the experience of having been an outfielder. You can shag flys all day long every day when they are hit from the foul line but until you are in the game and looking at balls hit from home, you don't get the right look to build real judgment.
Conclusion
We've gone over some important basic fundamentals you need to use when working with very young girls. You need to teach every young player to catch and throw. You need to teach every young outfielder to go after the ball. You need to teach more advanced girls what a proper pursuit vector is and how to chase after something diagonally with hip and shoulders in the running direction while keeping the ball in your line of vision. You must drill these skills over and over and continue doing so even after your girls have moved well beyond advanced beginner status. With more experienced girls, you want to provide more complicated drills. You also want to provide your outfielders with as much experience judging live hit balls as possible after the fundamental drilling for the day is done. But don't just stand along the third base line hitting cans of corn. try to get your girls experience with real live hit balls. It will pay off when your pitcher is having a tough day or the other team is bashing the ball around your defense like a pinball machine.
by Dave
Monday, March 06, 2006
Outfielders get no respect. There is a presumption early on that all the fun is to be had inside the pitchers circle, behind the plate or just anywhere in the infield. That may actually be true in the early years of rec ball but, over time, a good portion of the real action occurs out beyond where the skin ends and the green grasses begin. Let's take a look at some of the most important outfield skills and a few drills meant to strengthen them. I'm going to approach this from the earliest years and then move on to ones meant for older girls.
Beginner
Outfield skills are very different than those learned at other positions but in the early years they consist of all the basic fundamentals like throwing and catching. Before you move on to more involved skills, those who are destined to be put out to pasture need to work on throwing with a proper motion which will put the least amount of stress on the elbow and shoulder while generating the strongest, most accurate throw. But that's a subject for another day, one which should be emphasized by all coaches with all players at all levels, but one we don't have room to deal with here.
One of the most important fundamental skills all outfielders must possess is the ability to catch the ball. I'm talking about 7, 8, 9 even 10 year old girls here. They must be taught how to catch a ball properly. The first aspect to catching is the part of the body you use to catch a ball. That would be your eyes. Girls must be taught from the get go that they must keep their eyes on the ball at all times. This is an important emphasis point for all coaches. It sounds rudimentary to you but that's because you have been catching balls for decades and decades. When working with young girls, you must dig deeper into your experience than what is most obvious to you today.
Secondly, you catch the ball, to the extent possible, using both hands. This is not because two hands are better for catching a ball than one. It is because A) balls can pop out of mitts and having another hand there can prevent dropping the ball and B) you are going to have to remove the ball from the mitt anyway to make a throw back into the infield so you might as well have the throwing hand ready anyways. Another skill you can teach involves using the throwing hand to shade the sun but in any event, both hands should be high in the air when making a catch. Coaches, don't allow your girls to catch with one hand unless they are reaching for a ball they cannot get in front of. That brings us to an another important point. To the extent possible, you want your players to move their bodies so they line up with the ball trajectory. You don't want players to develop the habit of reaching for the ball out of laziness. It takes constant vigilance but this is one of the most important skills you can teach your kids.
Thirdly, you catch a ball below your waist with the pocket of the glove pointing skyward but you catch all other balls with the fingers pointed up. If you do this and ever drop the ball out of the mitt, your throwing hand should be there to complete the catch. Early on this might be the most difficult skill to teach. The way to do it is to use safety balls (the soft spongy kind), show your kids that being hit by the ball is not going to hurt, then throw little bloops slightly above their heads and force them to catch the ball with the fingers up. As an aside, a very good drill for young girls to learn catching in general is to play catch with a soft ball bare handed. This engenders hand-eye coordination and gives girls confidence that they can catch. You don't want to start an 8-9 year old practice with all your girls playing catch with each other. You, the coach throw to the girls and have them throw to you. At some point, if you've done your job correctly, your girls will be confident and capable enough to catch by themselves.
Slightly Advanced Beginner
So you've taught throwing skills to all your players and now they can catch pretty well. I assume you've also taught infield ground ball fielding skills too and now you are ready to do some outfield specific skills. The first thing I want to say here is that there are not a huge number of fly balls in the outfield in the early years but you do need your girls to learn to field balls on the ground in the outfield so this is a good place to start. If you watch youth rec games and see balls which end up in the outfield, you will likely notice that most of the outfielders simply stand and watch until the ball stops. So a good place to start discussing outfield play is to tell your girls that all outfielders must run towards where the ball is going until they are sure somebody else is going to get it.
Secondly, the way to chase a ball in the outfield is different than it is in the infield. In the infield, you want your girls to keep their hips and shoulders square to homeplate as they cross step to the point of meeting the ball (obviously until you work balls in the holes or do backhand skills). In the outfield, you want to teach girls to turn their hips and shoulders to the direction they are running while keeping their head and eyes faced in the direction of the ball. A good drill for young outfielders is to have them run 40 yard sprints in a direction perpendicular to you while keeping their eyes on you. Do about 5-10 repetitions for each girl once a week or every other week. This should take no more than 10-15 minutes if you have ten girls running this drill.
It is important to emphasize that the girls are not running towards the ball but running to where they expect the ball to be. This is learned through experience so after a few iterations with just running sprints - no ball involved - you can modify the beginner outfielder drill to add chasing the ball. I suggest you set up a cone or some other marker at the 40 yard distance from the starting point then roll the ball towards that while the girls are running their sprints. Later on you can hit the ground balls using a bat to get a more realistic experience and you can do away with the forty yard aspect and a marker. the thing to make sure you do with anyone who is going to be in the outfield is make sure A) they are running after balls, B) they are running to where they expect to meet the moving ball, C) they turn their hips and shoulders to that meeting point, and D) they are keeping their eyes on the ball - turned inwards, not looking where they are running.
A good way to reinforce this is to take two sets of girls into the outfield, one in center, the other in left. One girl from each group at a time takes up position and then you roll or hit balls between them. Both girls race towards where they think the ball will be when they get there. Once you have run this drill a few times, you want to introduce the concept of backing each other up. Obviously you are not always going to hit or throw the ball exactly in between the two players. And just as obviously, one girl or the other is going to be the faster runner. Tell both sets of girls that at the point where they can judge the other girls is going to get to the ball first to modify their running to run about 15 feet in back of the girl who is going to get to the ball first. So the effective outfielder drill is with two spots in the outfield and a ball thrown or hit between them, both players pursue the ball and one judges herself to become the back up fielder. take care that one girl is not always making the play and the other performing the back up. I think you can handle this aspect of things as you see fit. Just don;t allow wallflowers to get stuck to the wall.
As far as actually fielding the outfield ball on the ground goes, I have seen a large number of coaches to teach girls to go down on one knee to field a ball. I disagree. I don't see how actually retrieving the ball on the ground is really any different in the outfield than it is in the infield except that in the outfield, the speed is usually diminished and diminishing. I don't buy into the notion that an outfielder gains anything by going to one knee but I won't argue with those who advocate it. The only thing I see different about outfielding is there is no need of placing the hand up in front of the face as in the "alligator" position since a fielder should not be waiting for the ball to come to her. On a ball to hit to either side of a fielder, she runs to meet the ball, arriving as the ball does. She should use two hands but there is not the need to put one hand in front of the face. The throwing hand goes with the mitt to retrieve the ball.
If a ball is hit right at a girl, she will need to "charge the ball" by which I mean, she should be moving towards it. Teach early outfielders to take short choppy steps - not to run with long strides. Ball which get past early outfielders often do so because of a lack of timing on the part of the running-all-out fielder. This problem can be alleviated by teaching girls to run short choppy strides on balls hit right at them. You can drill this by simply rolling balls out to the outfielders and make them learn through experience that short strides are better. On these sorts of plays, the shoulders and hips must be square to home like they are in infield drills and girls should be taught to take fewer steps toward the ball than they think they should. Have your outfielders, one at a time, stand in leftfield while you stand at the edge of the dirt. The player assumes ready position and then begins taking short choppy steps towards you but stops when you roll the ball right at her, at which point she goes down like an infielder with waist and knees bent, butt above the knee, glove down by the ground and throwing hand with the glove. Now move back to around third base or a little closer to home and roll balls out to the fielder who begins moving as soon as you roll the ball but stops and prepares to field the ball as soon as it clears the dirt and is rolling on grass. As an aside, because the ball and grass interact, it is almost impossible to roll a ball precisely to the fielder but this doesn't change the drill or the skill. Girls approach the ball hit right at them and make little adjustments as they see the ball slightly to their left or right just as infielders do.
Advanced Advanced Beginner
So we've covered grounders for beginner outfielders and now it's time to move on to fly balls. The skills are not very much different than they are for grounders. But obviously the ball is flying.
The first thing you want to teach your fielders is three words, "MINE, MINE, MINE" on all fly balls. Start out with a game of "catch" where you are 30 feet from the girl in the drill. Toss a short popup to her. She yells "mine, mine, mine" and catches the ball. After each girl has had three turns, throw the ball a little higher and to her side. Again, "mine, mine, mine" followed hopefully by a catch. The next kind of drill is to make the fielder run for the ball the same way they did for the grounder, hips and shoulders in the direction being run while head and eyes following the ball, and, of course, "mine, mine, mine." I just cannot say that enough. And neither can outfielders.
Your next drill will be to place outfielders in two fields, say center and left, and then throw the popup between them. The girls run and when one decides she can get to it, she calls it and the other girls should move to a backup position well behind the girl making the play. It is drastically important to teach your girls to honor the one who first makes the call. This will help avoid injuries due to collisions in games and will teach teamwork since, lets face it, somewhere, sometime, the fielder making the call is going to miss the ball and the girl who backs up effectively is going to save bases, perhaps runs, and feel really good about helping the team. If you see a girl call the ball too early, stop the drill and point out the error. If you see one girl give up on the ball because she is sure the other is going to make the play, stop the drill and make her go again. How many times do you see a can-a-corn popup where one outfielder is clearly going to make the catch and right at the end of the play you see the other fielder run behind the one making the catch. I don't care if you are taking the US National Softball Team or the Major League All-Star Game, outfielders must back each other up on every play. Now is the time to teach them that.
Intermediate
We've gone over some basic outfielding skills dealing with ground balls and flies. We've discussed some drills you can use for young girls to prepare them to play the outfield. Now it is time to step it up a bit and talk about some more advanced drilling. The skills remain the same but more difficult drilling is called for. The first drill is an angular pursuit drill. The coach is standing around second base with a player positioned about 30 feet in front of the coach on the outfield grass. She runs diagonally towards the foul pole and, after she gets about 30 feet, the coach throws a pop or line drive type throw beyond her forcing her to run hard to make the catch. Just as with the little kids, make sure her hips and shoulders are square to the direction being run while the head is turned to the thrower, eyes on the ball. Of course, when the trajectory of the ball is determined, the hips and shoulders will take that running direction and the head and eyes will follow the ball. Repeat this drill at least ten times per girls.
Now you are ready for a change of direction drill. In the same setup as before, the player runs towards the foul pool but the coach allows her to run further - say 60 or 70 feet, then the coach throws the ball behind her, she alters her position by turning back towards the coach and then in the new direction. You can vary this drill by making multiple changes of direction based upon the direction the coach is pointing and then throwing. You can also change the direction you are throwing randomly to cause a more real world experience.
Here's another change of direction drill for you involving two coaches, one at second, the other at third. The player in the drill stands about thirty feet in front but slightly to the left of the coach at second base. She begins running to a point about halfway between third base and the foul pole and the coach at second throws the ball. After she catches the ball and returns it quickly to the coach at second, she now runs out towards centerfield the other way and the coach at third throws in her direction. After a few iterations of this drill, start the next player into her motion as soon as the coach at second receives the ball so two girls are fielding in opposite direction simultaneously. The mayhem caused by running two plays simultaneously is a good lesson for any fielder.
Advanced Intermediate
OK, so we've discussed fielding the ball but we've said little about the fundamentals of moving from ball retriever to making the play back into the infield. I think it is fair to say we are all familiar with the term :crow hop" as it relates to a fielder making a throw. This is particularly important with respect to outfielders where a strong throw is often required. Outfielders need to work on the transition from fielding a ball to crow hop to throwing. For balls on the ground this is fairly simple. If you go back to the drill where we hit or threw the ball directly to the outfielder, all you need to do is add making the throw. For righty throwing fielders, the action of picking the ball up (similar to what an infielder does) is immediately followed by a step with the right foot where the instep is pointing to the throwing direction. That's the hop which is then followed by the throw. So a righty outfielder would have slightly more weight on her left foot as she is retrieving the ball which allows her to hop to the right foot.
When discussing throws from the outfield, I think I see more inexperienced outfielders try to make long throws by arcing the ball upwards. There is no question that throwing a ball upwards at a 45 degree angle to the ground will maximize its distance. But please don't teach your outfielders to throw like this. It is far better to teach infielders to go out and pursue a cut off throw than it is to teach outfielders to throw the full distance by throwing at an upwards angle.
Sometimes you need to make a full distance throw as in the circumstance of a runner tagging up at third, but throwing at a 45 degree angle is still wrong in these circumstances. This is a throw for heroes who dream of winning the game by making a perfect throw to home with no hops. The right place to aim a throw is right at the cutoff person's head or slightly above it. The idea is to hit the cutoff person in the head and if this results in an angle of more than 25 degrees, your cutoff is not out far enough. Even on a throw to home with the winning run coming in from third, the place for the throw is the cutoff person's head. As a player who has been involved with many a tag plays at home, I can tell you that it is far better for a ball to hop two or three times in the infield than it is to try and jump to retrieve the ball and then make the tag. Make your outfielders throw low and on line with the bases. Teach your infielders and catcher to get used to throws hopping on the infield and making tags from there. Don;t teach your outfielders that they have to make the throw to the bases without hops.
One of the tricks to learning good fundamentals is a lot of drilling. Live hit balls is great for an outfielder to gain experience. But before you do that, you need a lot of drilling of fundamentals so an outfielder does the right thing in a fundamental sense every time she is hit the ball. You should keep drilling the thrown ball drills throughout the season to enforce good fundamental skills. But that having been said, let's move on to live hit ball drills.
After the fundamentals have been ground into an outfielder's head much of what is gained in practice is the experiential part of outfielding. You need to see a lot of different trajectories and hit speeds in order to become a truly skilled outfielder. Simply hitting ball after ball to outfielders will not get that done. You have to try to spray the ball around, hit line drives and pop flys, etc. And each of your fielders needs to gain experience in each of the three outfield positions. It is best if you can have both a righty and lefty hitting practice fly balls since each offers different spins to balls hit to the various fields. Also while the lack of practice space may force you to hit flys to your outfielders from a point along the foul line, say between third and the foul pole, that's not the real trajectory of hit balls during the game. if you have enough space to take over a whole field from time to time. Hit balls to your outfielders from home plate as this provides a more valuable experience. And because all hitters hit balls differently, if you are running a machine or pitcher pitched batting practice on the field, it is often valuable to have your outfielders out there shagging flys and line drives off live bats. Do your drills for fundamentals but the more live balls a fielder can view, judge, and run down, the better. I say this from the experience of having been an outfielder. You can shag flys all day long every day when they are hit from the foul line but until you are in the game and looking at balls hit from home, you don't get the right look to build real judgment.
Conclusion
We've gone over some important basic fundamentals you need to use when working with very young girls. You need to teach every young player to catch and throw. You need to teach every young outfielder to go after the ball. You need to teach more advanced girls what a proper pursuit vector is and how to chase after something diagonally with hip and shoulders in the running direction while keeping the ball in your line of vision. You must drill these skills over and over and continue doing so even after your girls have moved well beyond advanced beginner status. With more experienced girls, you want to provide more complicated drills. You also want to provide your outfielders with as much experience judging live hit balls as possible after the fundamental drilling for the day is done. But don't just stand along the third base line hitting cans of corn. try to get your girls experience with real live hit balls. It will pay off when your pitcher is having a tough day or the other team is bashing the ball around your defense like a pinball machine.
Home Schooling The Outfield
by Dave
Friday, April 14, 2006
In competitive softball every single slight advantage can make the difference between winning and losing. You scout your opponent to give your pitcher and fielders an edge. You discuss strategies about how to get specific hitters out. You plan to rattle a poor fielding pitcher, first or third baseman by bunting or slapping at her. You steal at key moments against a catcher you think has an erratic arm. You take extra bases against teams which don't routinely perform good cutoffs. You look for every small item which might produce or prevent a run. There is one thing most teams do not seem to do, except at the highest levels, which you can use to turn triples into doubles, doubles into singles, and hits into outs. You should at least consider this special something if you feel your team is up to the task. What I'm getting at is giving signs to your outfielders regarding pitch selection and location.
I think we all know that the spin of the ball coming off a curveball hit to the opposite field by a right handed batter is going to be somewhat different than that on a hit on a rise, drop or change. If your rightfielder knows this pitch is a curve, she is prepared to move to the line in a hurry and can get that split-second better jump which turns a hit into an out. Similarly, if you've got a girl pitching who really pumps it up there, knowing that a pitch is inside or out says a lot about where it might be hit if the batter makes contact. Fielders generally do fine without this information but, in one run games, they can make that key play which might otherwise elude them by bare inches.
Also, softball is a game of adjustments. You adjust your pitcher's approach to get a hitter out. The hitter adjusts to a given pitcher. No battle plan ever survives first contact with the enemy. Let's say you scout a particular heavy-hitting cleanup hitter and find she likes the ball down and in regardless of type of pitch. So your pitcher is going to work her away. That's fine but eventually she's going to get wise and start stepping towards the plate to even the score. So you've got to find ways to keep her honest. Maybe you're going to throw some drops inside and low and an occasional change or rise up but outside the strike zone to set her up. But if your pitcher makes a mistake, she may give this hitter an opportunity to drive one out of her wheel house. You want your outfielders ready so if they know what the pitcher is going to throw and where, they can at least be ready.
The key questions are: can your outfielders handle knowing what and where the pitch is going to be, and how do you inform them. Let me answer the second question first since this is pretty easy. Your middle infielders should be the only players who can see the signs from catcher to pitcher. It doesn't so much matter whether your first and third baseman know pitch type and location since these are reaction positions with no time to adjust, so there's less of a reason to inform them. Besides, it is too risky signaling them, the other team can pick these off. So second and short know what pitch is coming and the location. These players can signal the outfielders with their throwing hands behind their backs. You use the same signs you use for all your pitchers. They signal location via pre-arranged methods like, for example, an outside pitch is indicated by the mitt hand hanging free by their side and an inside one by extending the glove forwards say by the belly button. You can use any method you find convenient but the important thing is to give a very clear signal to the outfielder which cannot be picked up by the opposing team.
Things get a little more complicated when you've got a runner at second who can also see the signs from the catcher. Obviously you might use a series of signals which have different meanings like the first finger tells the pitcher which of the next two or three signs is the real one. Or maybe location is going to be given by some other subtle sign. Your middle infielders need to know what the signs are with a runner at second so make sure they do. Let them know that if the catcher comes out to talk to the pitcher with runners on, they have to join that conference so they know which signs are being used.
Another problem with runners on base is the positioning of the umpire. Often, with a runner on second, he or she will place themselves behind the shortstop and can sometimes block the leftfielder from seeing short's pitch sign. Similarly, with a runner on first, the ump will often stand behind your second baseman blocking the rightfielder's view of the sign. This can usually be overcome by a slight position change but your leftfielder must know to watch out for the ump moving around and blocking her. In any event, you must also tell your outfielders that if they don't see the complete sign, they should ignore it. It doesn't do them much good to know the pitch type if they don't also know location and vice versa. So work hard to get them the complete sign. Move a couple feet if the ump gets in the way or even talk to the ump between innings and let him or her know they're messing with your signs. But likely they won't reposition themselves for your convenience any way. And make sure to tell your outfielders not to use incomplete signs.
As a final word on giving the pitch signal, there are two considerations which should not be forgotten. First, outfielders should not alter their positions for different pitches. This can tip off the other team and give them back the advantage. Secondly, you must be aware of fans or even coaches for the other team lurking about the outfield fence. It takes only a couple of pitches to pick off the complete set of signs. And if they can pick off the signs, they can just as easily signal back to the field what pitch is coming. The way to combat both the over eager outfielder and the fan signaling the pitch back is to give the sign late in the play. Once the pitcher begins her windup, it is about a second before the ball is released and a little over a half second before the ball arrives to the plate. So signaling no sooner than the pitcher begins her windup is advised since one and a half seconds does not give the guy standing at the outfield fence enough time to signal even the most cerebral of hitters in time to change batting approach. It also doesn't give the outfielders time to move more than a step or two (but see below for more discussion of this).
The one to the batter's opportunity to adjust is the changeup. Say a fan is standing out in center and all he does is look for the changeup sign in which case he raises his arms straight up (not a bad technique if you're batting, by the way), your opponent is either going to have a huge advantage over you or is going to take one pitch away from the pitcher's repertoire. So, for this pitch, I seriously suggest you concoct a series of different signs to fool the jerk in the outfield. For example, let's say your pitcher has the following pitches and signs: 1, fastball; 2 change; 3 screwball; 4 drop; 5 curve. You can use two fingers for the change but you can also use any number of fingers as long as they are placed below the beltline, for example. And / or, you can use any number of fingers near the hat or visor as also indicating a change up. So 1 finger in the middle of the back is a fastball but one finger on the butt is a changeup.
What is not advisable is changing the signals every inning or even every game. That is just plain too much to think about. The change is the only pitch I get really concerned about the other team picking up since it can be hit a long way and change the game entirely. In general follow the KISS method - keep it simple, stupid. And provide multiple signals only for the change and only in interests of defeating somebody standing in the outfield to pick up your signs.
So that's enough about how to do it but before you decide to signal your outfielders about pitch and location, you have to do some serious soul searching to decide whether or not you should. This really depends on the level of maturity and game intelligence of your fielders. As I said before, you don't want your outfielders to move before the pitch based on selection or location. That is too easy of a tip off to the batter. You want them to be prepared for a liner down the line but you don't want to position them as if that is what they are expecting. If your outfielders have demonstrated an understanding of this simple fact, I suppose you can go ahead but only if you are comfortable that they will use the knowledge about the pitch effectively. This is perhaps the hardest question of them all.
When I was a lad, I was fortunate enough to attend a football camp where I received instruction from an NFL linebacker. He taught me not to commit too early. He said wait one second (not really a whole second just an under-the-breath counting of "1") and see where the play develops, then move to it. That momentary hesitation taught me to not over commit and get beat by being out of position. I applied the same sort of reasoning to my limited baseball outfield play. I always waited until I was sure where the ball was going and I never took my first step in the wrong direction. The same rule certainly applies to playing the outfield in softball but an outfielder can still use the knowledge of pitch type and location to her advantage. She just must use the knowledge with caution.
The only way I can explain this further is through example. The best example of knowing the pitch I can think of is a line drive straight at a fielder on a drop ball. The outfielder should know that the ball is going to sink rapidly and perhaps even skip after it hits the ground. That knowledge can permit a girl not to rush in and try to make a catch but rather to be prudent and play it on the hop while expecting the ball to skip. Similarly, knowing that a pitch is a rise ball up in the zone tells an outfielder that the ball is going to have back spin on it so she should charge and try to make a catch since the ball is not going to go anywhere after it hits the ground.
I began this discussion mentioning the spin on hit balls on curves and screwballs. I think this is a great place where outfielder knowledge can make a difference. If you've got a lefty up to bat and your pitcher is throwing a screwball down and away, your leftfielder chasing a ball hit down the line knows the ball is going to bounce into foul territory perhaps reach the corner if she doesn't get her mojo on and get to it. Similarly, the rightfielder on a curve hit by a righty knows the ball is going to hook more than usual causing her to miss it unless she hustles and gets over there.
There are myriad other pitch types and locations which change hit ball spin and direction. You can work these out for yourself but I wanted to at least give you a couple so you understand what I'm talking about. As a coach, perhaps you will want to either make a big chart which your outfielders have to commit to memory or limit the types of pitches you want them to consider so as to keep things simple. Knowledge is a good thing if it is within the context of full understanding but, beware, a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. So the deciding factor regarding whether or not to signal your outfielders on pitch selection and location is really going to boil down to the coach's assessment of the outfielders' game intelligence.
The fact is we play "a game of inch." Every one inch makes a huge difference to the outcome of a game. You want every advantage you can get. That includes the tiny piece of knowledge an outfielder can put to use if you signal her what and where. Well coached teams in highly competitive softball tell their outfielders what the pitch is going to be. It is very simple to signal your outfielders but be wary of what they will do with this knowledge and in all events, don't hand your opponent the advantage by providing them the same information.
by Dave
Friday, April 14, 2006
In competitive softball every single slight advantage can make the difference between winning and losing. You scout your opponent to give your pitcher and fielders an edge. You discuss strategies about how to get specific hitters out. You plan to rattle a poor fielding pitcher, first or third baseman by bunting or slapping at her. You steal at key moments against a catcher you think has an erratic arm. You take extra bases against teams which don't routinely perform good cutoffs. You look for every small item which might produce or prevent a run. There is one thing most teams do not seem to do, except at the highest levels, which you can use to turn triples into doubles, doubles into singles, and hits into outs. You should at least consider this special something if you feel your team is up to the task. What I'm getting at is giving signs to your outfielders regarding pitch selection and location.
I think we all know that the spin of the ball coming off a curveball hit to the opposite field by a right handed batter is going to be somewhat different than that on a hit on a rise, drop or change. If your rightfielder knows this pitch is a curve, she is prepared to move to the line in a hurry and can get that split-second better jump which turns a hit into an out. Similarly, if you've got a girl pitching who really pumps it up there, knowing that a pitch is inside or out says a lot about where it might be hit if the batter makes contact. Fielders generally do fine without this information but, in one run games, they can make that key play which might otherwise elude them by bare inches.
Also, softball is a game of adjustments. You adjust your pitcher's approach to get a hitter out. The hitter adjusts to a given pitcher. No battle plan ever survives first contact with the enemy. Let's say you scout a particular heavy-hitting cleanup hitter and find she likes the ball down and in regardless of type of pitch. So your pitcher is going to work her away. That's fine but eventually she's going to get wise and start stepping towards the plate to even the score. So you've got to find ways to keep her honest. Maybe you're going to throw some drops inside and low and an occasional change or rise up but outside the strike zone to set her up. But if your pitcher makes a mistake, she may give this hitter an opportunity to drive one out of her wheel house. You want your outfielders ready so if they know what the pitcher is going to throw and where, they can at least be ready.
The key questions are: can your outfielders handle knowing what and where the pitch is going to be, and how do you inform them. Let me answer the second question first since this is pretty easy. Your middle infielders should be the only players who can see the signs from catcher to pitcher. It doesn't so much matter whether your first and third baseman know pitch type and location since these are reaction positions with no time to adjust, so there's less of a reason to inform them. Besides, it is too risky signaling them, the other team can pick these off. So second and short know what pitch is coming and the location. These players can signal the outfielders with their throwing hands behind their backs. You use the same signs you use for all your pitchers. They signal location via pre-arranged methods like, for example, an outside pitch is indicated by the mitt hand hanging free by their side and an inside one by extending the glove forwards say by the belly button. You can use any method you find convenient but the important thing is to give a very clear signal to the outfielder which cannot be picked up by the opposing team.
Things get a little more complicated when you've got a runner at second who can also see the signs from the catcher. Obviously you might use a series of signals which have different meanings like the first finger tells the pitcher which of the next two or three signs is the real one. Or maybe location is going to be given by some other subtle sign. Your middle infielders need to know what the signs are with a runner at second so make sure they do. Let them know that if the catcher comes out to talk to the pitcher with runners on, they have to join that conference so they know which signs are being used.
Another problem with runners on base is the positioning of the umpire. Often, with a runner on second, he or she will place themselves behind the shortstop and can sometimes block the leftfielder from seeing short's pitch sign. Similarly, with a runner on first, the ump will often stand behind your second baseman blocking the rightfielder's view of the sign. This can usually be overcome by a slight position change but your leftfielder must know to watch out for the ump moving around and blocking her. In any event, you must also tell your outfielders that if they don't see the complete sign, they should ignore it. It doesn't do them much good to know the pitch type if they don't also know location and vice versa. So work hard to get them the complete sign. Move a couple feet if the ump gets in the way or even talk to the ump between innings and let him or her know they're messing with your signs. But likely they won't reposition themselves for your convenience any way. And make sure to tell your outfielders not to use incomplete signs.
As a final word on giving the pitch signal, there are two considerations which should not be forgotten. First, outfielders should not alter their positions for different pitches. This can tip off the other team and give them back the advantage. Secondly, you must be aware of fans or even coaches for the other team lurking about the outfield fence. It takes only a couple of pitches to pick off the complete set of signs. And if they can pick off the signs, they can just as easily signal back to the field what pitch is coming. The way to combat both the over eager outfielder and the fan signaling the pitch back is to give the sign late in the play. Once the pitcher begins her windup, it is about a second before the ball is released and a little over a half second before the ball arrives to the plate. So signaling no sooner than the pitcher begins her windup is advised since one and a half seconds does not give the guy standing at the outfield fence enough time to signal even the most cerebral of hitters in time to change batting approach. It also doesn't give the outfielders time to move more than a step or two (but see below for more discussion of this).
The one to the batter's opportunity to adjust is the changeup. Say a fan is standing out in center and all he does is look for the changeup sign in which case he raises his arms straight up (not a bad technique if you're batting, by the way), your opponent is either going to have a huge advantage over you or is going to take one pitch away from the pitcher's repertoire. So, for this pitch, I seriously suggest you concoct a series of different signs to fool the jerk in the outfield. For example, let's say your pitcher has the following pitches and signs: 1, fastball; 2 change; 3 screwball; 4 drop; 5 curve. You can use two fingers for the change but you can also use any number of fingers as long as they are placed below the beltline, for example. And / or, you can use any number of fingers near the hat or visor as also indicating a change up. So 1 finger in the middle of the back is a fastball but one finger on the butt is a changeup.
What is not advisable is changing the signals every inning or even every game. That is just plain too much to think about. The change is the only pitch I get really concerned about the other team picking up since it can be hit a long way and change the game entirely. In general follow the KISS method - keep it simple, stupid. And provide multiple signals only for the change and only in interests of defeating somebody standing in the outfield to pick up your signs.
So that's enough about how to do it but before you decide to signal your outfielders about pitch and location, you have to do some serious soul searching to decide whether or not you should. This really depends on the level of maturity and game intelligence of your fielders. As I said before, you don't want your outfielders to move before the pitch based on selection or location. That is too easy of a tip off to the batter. You want them to be prepared for a liner down the line but you don't want to position them as if that is what they are expecting. If your outfielders have demonstrated an understanding of this simple fact, I suppose you can go ahead but only if you are comfortable that they will use the knowledge about the pitch effectively. This is perhaps the hardest question of them all.
When I was a lad, I was fortunate enough to attend a football camp where I received instruction from an NFL linebacker. He taught me not to commit too early. He said wait one second (not really a whole second just an under-the-breath counting of "1") and see where the play develops, then move to it. That momentary hesitation taught me to not over commit and get beat by being out of position. I applied the same sort of reasoning to my limited baseball outfield play. I always waited until I was sure where the ball was going and I never took my first step in the wrong direction. The same rule certainly applies to playing the outfield in softball but an outfielder can still use the knowledge of pitch type and location to her advantage. She just must use the knowledge with caution.
The only way I can explain this further is through example. The best example of knowing the pitch I can think of is a line drive straight at a fielder on a drop ball. The outfielder should know that the ball is going to sink rapidly and perhaps even skip after it hits the ground. That knowledge can permit a girl not to rush in and try to make a catch but rather to be prudent and play it on the hop while expecting the ball to skip. Similarly, knowing that a pitch is a rise ball up in the zone tells an outfielder that the ball is going to have back spin on it so she should charge and try to make a catch since the ball is not going to go anywhere after it hits the ground.
I began this discussion mentioning the spin on hit balls on curves and screwballs. I think this is a great place where outfielder knowledge can make a difference. If you've got a lefty up to bat and your pitcher is throwing a screwball down and away, your leftfielder chasing a ball hit down the line knows the ball is going to bounce into foul territory perhaps reach the corner if she doesn't get her mojo on and get to it. Similarly, the rightfielder on a curve hit by a righty knows the ball is going to hook more than usual causing her to miss it unless she hustles and gets over there.
There are myriad other pitch types and locations which change hit ball spin and direction. You can work these out for yourself but I wanted to at least give you a couple so you understand what I'm talking about. As a coach, perhaps you will want to either make a big chart which your outfielders have to commit to memory or limit the types of pitches you want them to consider so as to keep things simple. Knowledge is a good thing if it is within the context of full understanding but, beware, a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. So the deciding factor regarding whether or not to signal your outfielders on pitch selection and location is really going to boil down to the coach's assessment of the outfielders' game intelligence.
The fact is we play "a game of inch." Every one inch makes a huge difference to the outcome of a game. You want every advantage you can get. That includes the tiny piece of knowledge an outfielder can put to use if you signal her what and where. Well coached teams in highly competitive softball tell their outfielders what the pitch is going to be. It is very simple to signal your outfielders but be wary of what they will do with this knowledge and in all events, don't hand your opponent the advantage by providing them the same information.
DEVELOPING YOUR OUTFIELD
Many coaches spend the last five minutes of practice with the outfield. This is supposed to build that “last line of defense.” If you are one of these coaches, you may never think twice about spending more time with your outfield until you find, during a game, that you don’t have one! That’s when the work begins. This outline is designed to help the coach design a plan of attack for developing a strong outfield and incorporate quality outfield training into your program.
The number one way to train an outfielder is by HITTING them thousands of balls, not by having them run thousands of times for the infield situations. The outfield has become a place to put players you aren’t really sure where they should go. They become the infamous “runners” for all situations. Yes, you do have to have them run for situations, but a comprehensive, pre-planned practice can help this group become key members of your team. To create an outfield that is confident, aggressive, loud, and solid make certain your practices address the following basic fundamentals.
I. Introduction to outfield play:
A. Reinforce the importance of the outfield.
1. They are the last line of defense.
2. Must hit cut-offs, no extra base hits given up
B. Every play could be the game winner
C. Communication, Confidence and Speed are absolutes
II. Basic Fundamentals:
A. Ready position / stance
1. One foot slightly back. Stay balanced on balls of your feet.
2. Hands are loose and ready to react
3. Eyes are focused on the contact point when the ball meets the bat
4. Communicate with teammates number of outs, where the play will be
B. Fielding fly balls
1. Drop step to the ball side / cross and go
2. The glove side foot should be forward
3. Player should catch ball over throwing shoulder with two hands
4. Track the ball, reach out and see ball into glove
5. Momentum should be going forward when catching a ball in front.
6. Balls hit directly overhead are the hardest to catch. RF and LF should drop toward the line because of the tail of the ball, CF should drop step to their most comfortable side.
C. Fielding ground balls (three types: safety stop/one knee, regular infield stop, and do or die)
1. When fielding a safety stop, player is down in a hurdle position on one knee.
2. Shoulders are squared up to ball
3. Field ball in front of body in a balanced position
4. When stopping a ground ball like an infielder, make sure the shoulders are squared up with the ball. The hand and glove are on the ground together with the body low.
5. When fielding a do or die ground ball, the momentum should be going forward. Player should round the ball to be in position to throw (catch ball on glove side), scoop the ball quickly and use the two-step crow hop throw.
6. Make good eye contact with the cut-off person and go forward after the throw.
III. Movement to the ball:
A. Know the pitch!
1. When you know where the pitch is going to be placed, visualize that pitch being hit and anticipate where you think they will hit it.
2. You will have a jump on the ball by mentally seeing the ball hit
B. Know the batter.
1. Know what the batter did last time at bat.
2. Know whether or not the batter is a pull hitter.
3. Determine the strength of the batter to decide how deep to play them
4. The flight of the ball can be determined before it is hit if you know how to read the batter’s hands.
C. Read ball height off the bat
1. A ball that is high immediately off the bat will need to be charged
2. A ball that is driven off the bat will get to you quickly and you may need to drop back some.
D. Drop Step for a ball hit directly over head
1. Drop one foot back toward the flight of the ball. Keep your eyes on the ball at all times.
2. Rotate hips and take a hard pivot back (crossover) to the ball
3. Drive your arms while running to the ball (put a glove on your outfielders when they are running bases)
4. Get to the landing spot of the ball in an all out sprint.
E. Pivot or crossover step when a ball is hit in between outfielders
1. Take a hard pivot, rotate hips, step across body and stay low
2. Never take your eyes off the hit ball
3. Drive your arms while running to the ball
4. Get to the landing spot of the ball in an all out sprint.
F. Reverse Roll when you have misjudged a fly ball
1. Roll your hips back toward the infield to the proper flight of the ball
2. Use short steps to change your direction
3. Keep your eyes on the ball at all times
G. Angles
1. Take the quickest path to the landing spot of the ball.
2. Read off the bat to tell how deep you must angle to cut off the ball.
H. Circling:
1. You must arrive at the landing spot at a position BEHIND the actual landing spot to set up a throw on the move.
2. Run through the ball by catching it on your throwing side with your glove side foot forward.
IV. Throwing techniques:
A. Develop a strong and accurate arm by playing catch with long tosses
1. Keep elbow above shoulder. Get good arm extension and snap wrist at end
2. Step toward target and make sure to follow through and apply backspin to the ball.
3. Use glove to point at target and pull straight down.
4. Use a low, hard throw with a quick release.
B. Lots of throwing drills
C. Crow-hop throws.
V. Cut offs, get the ball in quickly
A. Use them when there is no play to be made
B. Use them when the ball gets past an outfielder.
C. Use them when the outfielder does not have a strong enough arm to throw directly to the base.
VI. Communication – define the terminology you want to use such as “find it” or “mine” or “cut three”, etc.
A. Communication
B. Communication
C. Communication
Many coaches spend the last five minutes of practice with the outfield. This is supposed to build that “last line of defense.” If you are one of these coaches, you may never think twice about spending more time with your outfield until you find, during a game, that you don’t have one! That’s when the work begins. This outline is designed to help the coach design a plan of attack for developing a strong outfield and incorporate quality outfield training into your program.
The number one way to train an outfielder is by HITTING them thousands of balls, not by having them run thousands of times for the infield situations. The outfield has become a place to put players you aren’t really sure where they should go. They become the infamous “runners” for all situations. Yes, you do have to have them run for situations, but a comprehensive, pre-planned practice can help this group become key members of your team. To create an outfield that is confident, aggressive, loud, and solid make certain your practices address the following basic fundamentals.
I. Introduction to outfield play:
A. Reinforce the importance of the outfield.
1. They are the last line of defense.
2. Must hit cut-offs, no extra base hits given up
B. Every play could be the game winner
C. Communication, Confidence and Speed are absolutes
II. Basic Fundamentals:
A. Ready position / stance
1. One foot slightly back. Stay balanced on balls of your feet.
2. Hands are loose and ready to react
3. Eyes are focused on the contact point when the ball meets the bat
4. Communicate with teammates number of outs, where the play will be
B. Fielding fly balls
1. Drop step to the ball side / cross and go
2. The glove side foot should be forward
3. Player should catch ball over throwing shoulder with two hands
4. Track the ball, reach out and see ball into glove
5. Momentum should be going forward when catching a ball in front.
6. Balls hit directly overhead are the hardest to catch. RF and LF should drop toward the line because of the tail of the ball, CF should drop step to their most comfortable side.
C. Fielding ground balls (three types: safety stop/one knee, regular infield stop, and do or die)
1. When fielding a safety stop, player is down in a hurdle position on one knee.
2. Shoulders are squared up to ball
3. Field ball in front of body in a balanced position
4. When stopping a ground ball like an infielder, make sure the shoulders are squared up with the ball. The hand and glove are on the ground together with the body low.
5. When fielding a do or die ground ball, the momentum should be going forward. Player should round the ball to be in position to throw (catch ball on glove side), scoop the ball quickly and use the two-step crow hop throw.
6. Make good eye contact with the cut-off person and go forward after the throw.
III. Movement to the ball:
A. Know the pitch!
1. When you know where the pitch is going to be placed, visualize that pitch being hit and anticipate where you think they will hit it.
2. You will have a jump on the ball by mentally seeing the ball hit
B. Know the batter.
1. Know what the batter did last time at bat.
2. Know whether or not the batter is a pull hitter.
3. Determine the strength of the batter to decide how deep to play them
4. The flight of the ball can be determined before it is hit if you know how to read the batter’s hands.
C. Read ball height off the bat
1. A ball that is high immediately off the bat will need to be charged
2. A ball that is driven off the bat will get to you quickly and you may need to drop back some.
D. Drop Step for a ball hit directly over head
1. Drop one foot back toward the flight of the ball. Keep your eyes on the ball at all times.
2. Rotate hips and take a hard pivot back (crossover) to the ball
3. Drive your arms while running to the ball (put a glove on your outfielders when they are running bases)
4. Get to the landing spot of the ball in an all out sprint.
E. Pivot or crossover step when a ball is hit in between outfielders
1. Take a hard pivot, rotate hips, step across body and stay low
2. Never take your eyes off the hit ball
3. Drive your arms while running to the ball
4. Get to the landing spot of the ball in an all out sprint.
F. Reverse Roll when you have misjudged a fly ball
1. Roll your hips back toward the infield to the proper flight of the ball
2. Use short steps to change your direction
3. Keep your eyes on the ball at all times
G. Angles
1. Take the quickest path to the landing spot of the ball.
2. Read off the bat to tell how deep you must angle to cut off the ball.
H. Circling:
1. You must arrive at the landing spot at a position BEHIND the actual landing spot to set up a throw on the move.
2. Run through the ball by catching it on your throwing side with your glove side foot forward.
IV. Throwing techniques:
A. Develop a strong and accurate arm by playing catch with long tosses
1. Keep elbow above shoulder. Get good arm extension and snap wrist at end
2. Step toward target and make sure to follow through and apply backspin to the ball.
3. Use glove to point at target and pull straight down.
4. Use a low, hard throw with a quick release.
B. Lots of throwing drills
C. Crow-hop throws.
V. Cut offs, get the ball in quickly
A. Use them when there is no play to be made
B. Use them when the ball gets past an outfielder.
C. Use them when the outfielder does not have a strong enough arm to throw directly to the base.
VI. Communication – define the terminology you want to use such as “find it” or “mine” or “cut three”, etc.
A. Communication
B. Communication
C. Communication
Alone With Your Thoughts In The Outfield
Alone With Your Thoughts In The Outfield
by Dave
Wednesday, August 03, 2005
It is often said of softball players, "if you can hit, they'll find a place for you." Most often the "place" they find is in the outfield. Yet, especially on youth teams, very little is done to teach players outfielding skills. This is a tragedy waiting to happen especially if it happens to be you who the team has "found a place for" in the outfield.
The other day I watched a 14U state championship game. One team nearly mercied the other because they caught a couple breaks and their pitcher was rolling along pretty good. But just past the midway point of the game she began to get tired since it was very hot and humid that night. The other team began timing her pitches well and making solid contact. At first this didn't amount to much as the infielders made some great plays. Then the trailing team began hitting the ball into the outfield. Unfortunately for the team in the lead, their outfielders were very poor. One outfielder misjudged four balls over three innings and that allowed the other team to tie the game and eventually go on to win it.
Four balls into the outfield made all the difference in what ended in a 10-9 loss. I was happy for the winning team who never gave up and felt badly for the losing team because they had played so hard for 7 innings, only to lose. But I felt even worse for the girl in the outfield who made the bad plays because undoubtedly she blamed herself for her team's loss. I suspect it wasn't really her fault. Her judgement was so bad on balls just over her head that I'm positive her team did not give her the right kind of training. They put her in the lineup because she is generally a good player and probably a good hitter but they did little to prepare her for the position. I know. I've been there myself.
If you are a solid hitter but your defensive skills are not particularly sharp, you may want to work on the skills which make you adequate in the outfield before some coach puts you there with little or no preparation. You will need to work on different kinds of fielding and throwing skills and you'll need a slightly different perspective on situational plays. But you can work on these with some help from your friends and family.
Fielding
Perhaps the most difficult aspect of moving from the infield to the outfield is judging fly balls and line drives. Often outfield practice is limited to a bunch of girls shagging flies 15 minutes or half an hour once a week or every other week. The only other practice is during live hitting drills. But that's just not enough. Good high school and college programs realize how different and important judging balls in the outfield is, so they spend far more time working outfielders.
Outfielding is different from other positions because you have to really run for balls. If you are like most other human beings, when you run, your head bobs up and down. If your head is bobbing up and down, your eyes are constantly moving. If you try to judge where a ball is going while your eyes are jerking up and down, you are fighting a losing battle. That is the first thing you need to correct.
Your natural head bobbing can be overcome with experience and some running drills. Basically, the more you do of the right kind of running, the less your head bobs. Simply running miles and miles on a track or in the street does not do enough to correct this. Any running helps but you really need to run on outfield grass which is usually slightly uneven. You don't need to run miles and miles but you do need to run while focusing your eyes on objects. If you have a practice field near you with a street nearby, try running while focusing on the cars. If you don't have a road near the field, try a little bird watching during your runs. In any event, run while focusing your eyes on objects whether they are moving or not. This will train you to run while holding your head as still as possible. Over time, your running mechanics will correct themselves quite easily to keep your head still. This aspect of working out for the outfield will have the biggest single impact on your defensive game - don't ignore it.
Practicing the judgment on hit balls is a lot like batting practice. The more you get of it, the better you will be able to judge trajectory, speed, and spin. You need to find someone bigger and stronger than the girls in your league to hit you balls. If you have a big brother who plays baseball or a big sister who plays softball at a good level, enlist his or her help. The idea here is to have someone who can hit the ball over your head. You don't want a bunch of ground ball practice. You're looking for trajectory practice. You're training your eyes for hard hit balls.
Baseballs can be hit a lot harder than softballs. They're also harder to judge because they are smaller and usually darker, especially if they are dirty. So you may want to try practicing with them. If you do, I suggest using a fungo bat because it is far easier to hit airborn balls with a fungo than with a conventional baseball bat. You are working at training your eyes as much as anything else so don't get frustrated if your practice assistant is hitting balls way over your head or drilling line drives you have no hope of catching. This is good for you. Challenge the hitter to hit the ball past you in the air. Make a game of it. Count how many balls your big brother or sister has hit past you and how many you catch. Half an hour of doing this is probably the limit for the hitter and should be sufficient for you. But keep in mind that I'm assuming you and you alone are fielding the balls. In a good half an hour of shagging flies, you can probably field over one hundred. Make sure to bring a bag of balls. You're not working on your throws. You don't want to waste your valuable practice time with the batter retrieving the ball.
Finally your practice of shagging flies should be in as many different sun fields as possible. You want to make sure to work with the sun in and out of your line of sight, on mostly and partly cloudy days, with crystal clear "high sky" days, etc. If you can practice under the lights, great. Balls appear very different in the various sky and lighting conditions. Practice shagging flys in as many different conditions as possible. If your team plays under the lights, see if you can stay after a game one night and shag some flies.
Real speed may be God-given but raw speed does not make the outfielder. If you watch two outfielders of equal speed play centerfield, I think you will quickly see that one seems to get to the ball a lot faster than the other. And more importantly, the better outfielder is in better position when she makes a catch. This is due to a couple of things. First off, the better outfielder has quicker judgement which comes from lots of experience shagging flies. Secondly, she makes a point of getting to the spot where the ball is hit as quickly as possible. She does not drift to the catch spot so as to time her arrival with the arrival of the ball. This is the most common mistake newly minted outfielders make. Get to the spot, position your body, make the catch. Don't be casual or lazy.
Outfield speed comes with confidence of knowing where balls are going. We've covered the need to shag as many flys as possible in order to gain experience at judging balls. But there is another consideration. The moment the ball is hit, you need to use your eyes first, your brain second and your feet last. Put simply, before you can move to the ball, you need to assess where it is going. Balls hit far to your right or left are easy to assess. This is because you get a good view of the trajectory immediately. Balls hit more closely to your position are more difficult. You must hesitate before moving your feet because there is nothing worse in the outfield than making the wrong move first. We've all seen outfielders turn one way, then the other, sometimes even back to the original position. This happens when an outfielder is said to misjudge the ball. But I think of it as the outfielder moving before she knows where the ball is going. We all like to get a jump but jumping the wrong way costs you double because you not only have to switch direction but you also have to make up the lost ground from moving in the wrong direction first. This often manifests itself when an outfielder takes a step in on a ball destined to go over her head. The last thing you want to do is step in first. See first, think, then move. As you gain more practice, you will be a better judge and the moment of seeing then thinking will become shorter and shorter. If you are a beginning outfielder, take your time judging balls.
Here's one final thought on fielding hit balls in the outfield. Remember that if you are in left, a ball hit by a righty probably has top spin on it while one hit by a lefty most likely has side spin towards the line. The opposite is true of rightfield. And in center, most balls are either knuckled or have top spin. Particularly when judging balls which drop in front of you, you need to consider this as you approach to make your play. You've practiced a lot of shagging balls in your practices but real game situations are different. Balls are hit a lot harder in games because the pitcher is throwing harder. You need to always be mindful of potentially bad spins which end up being bad hops which end up being balls getting past you and running to the fence.
Throwing
Outfielders generally make fewer throws per game than infielders but their throws are more varied. You may have plenty of the typical throws where you retrieve a pop-up or a base hit and simply get the ball in to the infield. But you may also have to make throws to home on sac flys at a moment's notice. You need to practice throwing in close like the infielders do (60 feet) but you also have to practice making longer throws (at least 60-100 feet).
It alwasy amazes me to see teams coming out to the field where the outfielders stand next to each other warming up by throwing with bench players on the sideline. They stand 40 - 60 feet apart and throw back and forth like an infielder warming up. Between innings, it is absolutely critical for an outfielder to throw from a good distance of 60 - 100 feet. Throwing long distance tends to lengthen the muscles of the arm and stretch the tendons and ligaments. If the first time you throw the ball 140 feet is in the seventh inning, chances are pretty good you are going to make a bad throw. You may even injure yourself. Of all the arm injuries I have seen over many years, most involve longer throws. Please make a habit of practicing making long throws and, before and during games, make at least a couple of long throws.
When you are playing outfield there is one thing more important than the strength or conditioning of your arm. Your footwork is critical to making good throws. This is intertwined with judging the ball well and getting to the point of the catch quickly. I'm not going to go over proper body position here as we'll have to cover that another time. But you need to be moving towards your target at the moment you catch the ball. In order to do this you simply must get there before the ball does. If you do this the fotwork will come easily. The main difference between making a throw from the infield vs. the outfield is you have to throw a longer distance. In order to throw a longer distance, you need to take a good step. So an outfielder must catch the ball right at her head while moving towards her intended target, take a good step and throw.
Finally, it is absolutely imperative that you work on hitting the cutoff. A few weeks ago I watched a major league baseball game in which Vladimir Guerrero caught a ball on the warning track in right field and threw it all the way to third base on a fly. The game announcers marvelled at how strong an arm Vlad has. That's 100 yards, 300 feet! I agree, he has a strong arm. But that was a terrible play. The runner on second tagged up and Vlad had no chance to get him out at third. He threw the ball all the way to third on a fly which means it had a looping trajectory. This allowed the runner on first to move up to second. Huge mistake. Huge!
When throwing a ball in, you must keep the trajectory low. The best outfielders are not the ones with the strongest arms. They are the ones with strong, accurate throws with low trajectory. Had Vlad's throw been lower and on-target, an infielder would have been able to cut it off and throw out the runner moving from first to second.
When you are throwing from the outfield to a cutoff person, you must throw the ball where the cutoff person's head should be. I say this in that manner because sometimes cutoff people are out of position. If the cutoff person is out of position and you throw the ball where she should be, chances are good she'll adjust and make the catch if she needs to. To explain what I mean, let's say you are making a throw to home on a base hit or fly ball and the cutoff person is supposed to be between you and home. If she is not lined up properly with the catcher but you throw towards home intending to hit the spot where the cutoff person whould be, it will probably only take her three steps to move and catch the ball. If a cutoff person is out of position and you throw the ball where she is but she misses it, most likely there will not be a fielder behind her to grab it in time to make any play. I say you should throw at head level because, if the ball is allowed to go through, for example, to the catcher, hitting the spot where the cutoff's head should be results in a one bounce hop to the catcher. Finally, when you throw at head level, the ball actually gets there faster than if you use all your might to try to make it on a fly.
In addition to making good strong throws to cutoffs, you need to always be cognizant of game situations. I was watching another game recently where there were runners on second and third with one out in the bottom of the last with the batting team down a run. A fly ball was hit right down the third base line. If you had been that leftfielder under those circumstances and that ball had drifted foul, the right thing would be to drop it and not try to be the hero making the throw to home to nail the runner. In the game I was watching, the ball was fair and the fielder caught it. The runner from third tagged and went to score. The outfielder had a "great arm" and whipped the ball 5 feet over the catcher's head! The runner from second who was also tagging on the play ended up scoring on the overthrow. Ballgame over. Home team wins. Had that leftfielder made the throw at head level to the cutoff near third, I'm willing to bet the throw would have nailed the girl tagging from second. In fact, it might have gotten her before the tying run scored! Ballgame over. Visiting team wins.
As Tom Hanks once said in "A League of Their Own," "you really need to practice hitting the cutoff before next season."
Other Considerations
An outfielder can find herself not fielding a ball for an entire game, perhaps several consecutive games. Yet frequently after a long period of inactivity, often the one ball she gets is the most important one of a game or tournament. If that outfielder is you, you've just got to be ready in mind, body and soul.
It is difficult to keep your whits about you while counting the grass blades or dodging bees in the outfield. You've got to find ways to keep your mind and body active. One exercise I suggest is formulating a book on the hitters. You should keep track of who is hitting anyways but you might try analyzing her swing and judging where you think she is going to hit the ball based on that. You want to create a little knowledge base in your head of which kind of hitters tend to hit the ball to you. And doing this during a game keeps your mind active. Whatever you do, don't let yourself fall asleep. This is invariably when the ball gets hit to you!
When you are out there in left patiently peforming your mental exercises, watching the pitcher throw ball after ball or striking everyone out, you tend to get very tense whether you know it or not. You need to do some jogging and sprinting every couple of pitches in order to keep yourself loose. Move your arms around. Stretch. At least after walks and strike outs you need to do something to do some running to keep your legs moving. At the beginning of every inning, you run out to your position which loosens you up. The last thing you want to do is wait until two outs, bases loaded, and a 3-2 count to run again. Do some stretches and short runs while you are hanging out there in the outfield waiting for your next chance to get up to bat.
Conclusion
If you are one of those good hitters teams will find a place for, you can pretty much figure your home will be in the outfield. Make the best of it. Become as good a fielder as you possibly can. College scouts need to find good hitting outfielders too. And they are more apt to take one with decent to good defensive skills. Run in the field to calm your head. Shag lots of flies, on your own time if needs be. Work on throwing outfielder throws. Then keep your mind awake and your body loose. You never know when the ball is going to be hit to you or ... when those college scouts might show up.
by Dave
Wednesday, August 03, 2005
It is often said of softball players, "if you can hit, they'll find a place for you." Most often the "place" they find is in the outfield. Yet, especially on youth teams, very little is done to teach players outfielding skills. This is a tragedy waiting to happen especially if it happens to be you who the team has "found a place for" in the outfield.
The other day I watched a 14U state championship game. One team nearly mercied the other because they caught a couple breaks and their pitcher was rolling along pretty good. But just past the midway point of the game she began to get tired since it was very hot and humid that night. The other team began timing her pitches well and making solid contact. At first this didn't amount to much as the infielders made some great plays. Then the trailing team began hitting the ball into the outfield. Unfortunately for the team in the lead, their outfielders were very poor. One outfielder misjudged four balls over three innings and that allowed the other team to tie the game and eventually go on to win it.
Four balls into the outfield made all the difference in what ended in a 10-9 loss. I was happy for the winning team who never gave up and felt badly for the losing team because they had played so hard for 7 innings, only to lose. But I felt even worse for the girl in the outfield who made the bad plays because undoubtedly she blamed herself for her team's loss. I suspect it wasn't really her fault. Her judgement was so bad on balls just over her head that I'm positive her team did not give her the right kind of training. They put her in the lineup because she is generally a good player and probably a good hitter but they did little to prepare her for the position. I know. I've been there myself.
If you are a solid hitter but your defensive skills are not particularly sharp, you may want to work on the skills which make you adequate in the outfield before some coach puts you there with little or no preparation. You will need to work on different kinds of fielding and throwing skills and you'll need a slightly different perspective on situational plays. But you can work on these with some help from your friends and family.
Fielding
Perhaps the most difficult aspect of moving from the infield to the outfield is judging fly balls and line drives. Often outfield practice is limited to a bunch of girls shagging flies 15 minutes or half an hour once a week or every other week. The only other practice is during live hitting drills. But that's just not enough. Good high school and college programs realize how different and important judging balls in the outfield is, so they spend far more time working outfielders.
Outfielding is different from other positions because you have to really run for balls. If you are like most other human beings, when you run, your head bobs up and down. If your head is bobbing up and down, your eyes are constantly moving. If you try to judge where a ball is going while your eyes are jerking up and down, you are fighting a losing battle. That is the first thing you need to correct.
Your natural head bobbing can be overcome with experience and some running drills. Basically, the more you do of the right kind of running, the less your head bobs. Simply running miles and miles on a track or in the street does not do enough to correct this. Any running helps but you really need to run on outfield grass which is usually slightly uneven. You don't need to run miles and miles but you do need to run while focusing your eyes on objects. If you have a practice field near you with a street nearby, try running while focusing on the cars. If you don't have a road near the field, try a little bird watching during your runs. In any event, run while focusing your eyes on objects whether they are moving or not. This will train you to run while holding your head as still as possible. Over time, your running mechanics will correct themselves quite easily to keep your head still. This aspect of working out for the outfield will have the biggest single impact on your defensive game - don't ignore it.
Practicing the judgment on hit balls is a lot like batting practice. The more you get of it, the better you will be able to judge trajectory, speed, and spin. You need to find someone bigger and stronger than the girls in your league to hit you balls. If you have a big brother who plays baseball or a big sister who plays softball at a good level, enlist his or her help. The idea here is to have someone who can hit the ball over your head. You don't want a bunch of ground ball practice. You're looking for trajectory practice. You're training your eyes for hard hit balls.
Baseballs can be hit a lot harder than softballs. They're also harder to judge because they are smaller and usually darker, especially if they are dirty. So you may want to try practicing with them. If you do, I suggest using a fungo bat because it is far easier to hit airborn balls with a fungo than with a conventional baseball bat. You are working at training your eyes as much as anything else so don't get frustrated if your practice assistant is hitting balls way over your head or drilling line drives you have no hope of catching. This is good for you. Challenge the hitter to hit the ball past you in the air. Make a game of it. Count how many balls your big brother or sister has hit past you and how many you catch. Half an hour of doing this is probably the limit for the hitter and should be sufficient for you. But keep in mind that I'm assuming you and you alone are fielding the balls. In a good half an hour of shagging flies, you can probably field over one hundred. Make sure to bring a bag of balls. You're not working on your throws. You don't want to waste your valuable practice time with the batter retrieving the ball.
Finally your practice of shagging flies should be in as many different sun fields as possible. You want to make sure to work with the sun in and out of your line of sight, on mostly and partly cloudy days, with crystal clear "high sky" days, etc. If you can practice under the lights, great. Balls appear very different in the various sky and lighting conditions. Practice shagging flys in as many different conditions as possible. If your team plays under the lights, see if you can stay after a game one night and shag some flies.
Real speed may be God-given but raw speed does not make the outfielder. If you watch two outfielders of equal speed play centerfield, I think you will quickly see that one seems to get to the ball a lot faster than the other. And more importantly, the better outfielder is in better position when she makes a catch. This is due to a couple of things. First off, the better outfielder has quicker judgement which comes from lots of experience shagging flies. Secondly, she makes a point of getting to the spot where the ball is hit as quickly as possible. She does not drift to the catch spot so as to time her arrival with the arrival of the ball. This is the most common mistake newly minted outfielders make. Get to the spot, position your body, make the catch. Don't be casual or lazy.
Outfield speed comes with confidence of knowing where balls are going. We've covered the need to shag as many flys as possible in order to gain experience at judging balls. But there is another consideration. The moment the ball is hit, you need to use your eyes first, your brain second and your feet last. Put simply, before you can move to the ball, you need to assess where it is going. Balls hit far to your right or left are easy to assess. This is because you get a good view of the trajectory immediately. Balls hit more closely to your position are more difficult. You must hesitate before moving your feet because there is nothing worse in the outfield than making the wrong move first. We've all seen outfielders turn one way, then the other, sometimes even back to the original position. This happens when an outfielder is said to misjudge the ball. But I think of it as the outfielder moving before she knows where the ball is going. We all like to get a jump but jumping the wrong way costs you double because you not only have to switch direction but you also have to make up the lost ground from moving in the wrong direction first. This often manifests itself when an outfielder takes a step in on a ball destined to go over her head. The last thing you want to do is step in first. See first, think, then move. As you gain more practice, you will be a better judge and the moment of seeing then thinking will become shorter and shorter. If you are a beginning outfielder, take your time judging balls.
Here's one final thought on fielding hit balls in the outfield. Remember that if you are in left, a ball hit by a righty probably has top spin on it while one hit by a lefty most likely has side spin towards the line. The opposite is true of rightfield. And in center, most balls are either knuckled or have top spin. Particularly when judging balls which drop in front of you, you need to consider this as you approach to make your play. You've practiced a lot of shagging balls in your practices but real game situations are different. Balls are hit a lot harder in games because the pitcher is throwing harder. You need to always be mindful of potentially bad spins which end up being bad hops which end up being balls getting past you and running to the fence.
Throwing
Outfielders generally make fewer throws per game than infielders but their throws are more varied. You may have plenty of the typical throws where you retrieve a pop-up or a base hit and simply get the ball in to the infield. But you may also have to make throws to home on sac flys at a moment's notice. You need to practice throwing in close like the infielders do (60 feet) but you also have to practice making longer throws (at least 60-100 feet).
It alwasy amazes me to see teams coming out to the field where the outfielders stand next to each other warming up by throwing with bench players on the sideline. They stand 40 - 60 feet apart and throw back and forth like an infielder warming up. Between innings, it is absolutely critical for an outfielder to throw from a good distance of 60 - 100 feet. Throwing long distance tends to lengthen the muscles of the arm and stretch the tendons and ligaments. If the first time you throw the ball 140 feet is in the seventh inning, chances are pretty good you are going to make a bad throw. You may even injure yourself. Of all the arm injuries I have seen over many years, most involve longer throws. Please make a habit of practicing making long throws and, before and during games, make at least a couple of long throws.
When you are playing outfield there is one thing more important than the strength or conditioning of your arm. Your footwork is critical to making good throws. This is intertwined with judging the ball well and getting to the point of the catch quickly. I'm not going to go over proper body position here as we'll have to cover that another time. But you need to be moving towards your target at the moment you catch the ball. In order to do this you simply must get there before the ball does. If you do this the fotwork will come easily. The main difference between making a throw from the infield vs. the outfield is you have to throw a longer distance. In order to throw a longer distance, you need to take a good step. So an outfielder must catch the ball right at her head while moving towards her intended target, take a good step and throw.
Finally, it is absolutely imperative that you work on hitting the cutoff. A few weeks ago I watched a major league baseball game in which Vladimir Guerrero caught a ball on the warning track in right field and threw it all the way to third base on a fly. The game announcers marvelled at how strong an arm Vlad has. That's 100 yards, 300 feet! I agree, he has a strong arm. But that was a terrible play. The runner on second tagged up and Vlad had no chance to get him out at third. He threw the ball all the way to third on a fly which means it had a looping trajectory. This allowed the runner on first to move up to second. Huge mistake. Huge!
When throwing a ball in, you must keep the trajectory low. The best outfielders are not the ones with the strongest arms. They are the ones with strong, accurate throws with low trajectory. Had Vlad's throw been lower and on-target, an infielder would have been able to cut it off and throw out the runner moving from first to second.
When you are throwing from the outfield to a cutoff person, you must throw the ball where the cutoff person's head should be. I say this in that manner because sometimes cutoff people are out of position. If the cutoff person is out of position and you throw the ball where she should be, chances are good she'll adjust and make the catch if she needs to. To explain what I mean, let's say you are making a throw to home on a base hit or fly ball and the cutoff person is supposed to be between you and home. If she is not lined up properly with the catcher but you throw towards home intending to hit the spot where the cutoff person whould be, it will probably only take her three steps to move and catch the ball. If a cutoff person is out of position and you throw the ball where she is but she misses it, most likely there will not be a fielder behind her to grab it in time to make any play. I say you should throw at head level because, if the ball is allowed to go through, for example, to the catcher, hitting the spot where the cutoff's head should be results in a one bounce hop to the catcher. Finally, when you throw at head level, the ball actually gets there faster than if you use all your might to try to make it on a fly.
In addition to making good strong throws to cutoffs, you need to always be cognizant of game situations. I was watching another game recently where there were runners on second and third with one out in the bottom of the last with the batting team down a run. A fly ball was hit right down the third base line. If you had been that leftfielder under those circumstances and that ball had drifted foul, the right thing would be to drop it and not try to be the hero making the throw to home to nail the runner. In the game I was watching, the ball was fair and the fielder caught it. The runner from third tagged and went to score. The outfielder had a "great arm" and whipped the ball 5 feet over the catcher's head! The runner from second who was also tagging on the play ended up scoring on the overthrow. Ballgame over. Home team wins. Had that leftfielder made the throw at head level to the cutoff near third, I'm willing to bet the throw would have nailed the girl tagging from second. In fact, it might have gotten her before the tying run scored! Ballgame over. Visiting team wins.
As Tom Hanks once said in "A League of Their Own," "you really need to practice hitting the cutoff before next season."
Other Considerations
An outfielder can find herself not fielding a ball for an entire game, perhaps several consecutive games. Yet frequently after a long period of inactivity, often the one ball she gets is the most important one of a game or tournament. If that outfielder is you, you've just got to be ready in mind, body and soul.
It is difficult to keep your whits about you while counting the grass blades or dodging bees in the outfield. You've got to find ways to keep your mind and body active. One exercise I suggest is formulating a book on the hitters. You should keep track of who is hitting anyways but you might try analyzing her swing and judging where you think she is going to hit the ball based on that. You want to create a little knowledge base in your head of which kind of hitters tend to hit the ball to you. And doing this during a game keeps your mind active. Whatever you do, don't let yourself fall asleep. This is invariably when the ball gets hit to you!
When you are out there in left patiently peforming your mental exercises, watching the pitcher throw ball after ball or striking everyone out, you tend to get very tense whether you know it or not. You need to do some jogging and sprinting every couple of pitches in order to keep yourself loose. Move your arms around. Stretch. At least after walks and strike outs you need to do something to do some running to keep your legs moving. At the beginning of every inning, you run out to your position which loosens you up. The last thing you want to do is wait until two outs, bases loaded, and a 3-2 count to run again. Do some stretches and short runs while you are hanging out there in the outfield waiting for your next chance to get up to bat.
Conclusion
If you are one of those good hitters teams will find a place for, you can pretty much figure your home will be in the outfield. Make the best of it. Become as good a fielder as you possibly can. College scouts need to find good hitting outfielders too. And they are more apt to take one with decent to good defensive skills. Run in the field to calm your head. Shag lots of flies, on your own time if needs be. Work on throwing outfielder throws. Then keep your mind awake and your body loose. You never know when the ball is going to be hit to you or ... when those college scouts might show up.
