I was walking my dog and saw a youth baseball game, where I saw a coach soft toss a ball to a player during the game as the league has a rule that generates a soft toss after a walk. The soft toss should’ve been one toss and a solid hit to the field, and instead it was seven or eight tosses and finally a little tap right in front of the plate. The point here is not about soft toss. It’s about preparation. If you know you’re gonna do soft toss in the game you have to work it over and over again in practice and you have to do it with whoever is going to be doing the soft toss. Same thing applies to pitching — imagine all the time in practices where a tall coach lobs a ball to a player. Does that really teach the hitter much of anything that’s going to happen in a game? During the game, a young player is gonna throw the ball pretty hard, as hard as they really can and keep it under control, to the catcher, simulating. This is difficult in practice, but I have found that having players throw tennis balls to the catcher is a good way to do it because that way I can have several going at the same time and I think it’s close. The point here is not about an individual drill. It’s about closing your eyes and thinking about what happened during a game and how can you simulate it in practice so that you do it enough times that during a game you can walk over to a kid and say trust your preparation.
If this idea of game-simulating your practices hits home for you, hop on the newsletter or grab the free Quick Start Guide — both are packed with more ways to make your practices actually look like games.
