Blog

It is difficult to change and have the time to make major baseball fundamentals changes during the season. Now that the season has ended or the pace has slowed for most youth ballplayers, the time is best for making the muscle memory adjustments to improve and avoid this past year's deficiencies. Players are still in baseball shape so any extra swing, throw or field practice should not put players in danger of injury.

As the baseball season winds down, players have to make their season ending plans, which are crucial for next season's development. Players must decide a few important things for their baseball off-season. First, which months are they planning to take off from even touching a baseball or bat. Downtime is crucial and that break should be a minimum of 3 months for even the most dedicated of players. That break time allows players to come back with a determination that year round play cannot produce.

When coaches draft teams or have tryouts, they should watch for players that display high character. Indications of high character players are not getting too upset after failure, cheering on others, hustle and thanking coaches for things. Of course, the ideal situation is having talented players who have high character.

Listen close young hitters - I have had some ballplayers that could smoke balls off the batting tee but had little batting success in games. But here is the important thing - In 26 years of coaching, I have never had a successful hitter in games that was not very good on the batting tee.