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Practice: As in any sport, repetition is
key to mastery for young baseball player. To properly teach fundamentals of fielding groundballs, for example, it is largely a matter of numbers and familiarity. The player who has fielded 10,000 groundballs has an advantage over player that has only fielded 1,000. And because of a pitching machines consistency, speed, versatility, and flexibility, achieving these numbers is much easier than trying to hit all those grounders and fly balls yourself with a bat. Furthermore, just like in tryout situation, being able to throw same grounder at every player on your team allows you to quickly evaluate strengths and weaknesses and where your knowledge of fundamentals can best be applied. Is that player afraid of ball? Is that player standing flat-footed and waiting for ball instead of attacking it? With right pitching machine and techniques, these questions are soon answered and your team is that much stronger because of it.
This article is just an overview of how a versatile pitching machine can help a team go from pretender to contender. We will discuss drills and more specific techniques in forthcoming articles, but if you’ve just been thinking as a pitching machine as a tool in batting practice, we hope that this article has given you some ideas as to many applications of a great machine like Jugs Combo Machine for any municipal league, team, or individual player.
Carl Fogle is a longtime baseball coach at the high school and community college level. He is also the webmaster of http://pitching-machines.us and a leading expert in the use of pitching machines in the development of young baseball players.
