Youth Baseball Drills | Youth Baseball Tips , Instruction and Drills

Youth Baseball Hitting Drills

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Hitting off the tee

One of the most effective youth baseball hitting drills is hitting off the tee. One reason is this baseball hitting drill is appropriate for all ages of baseball players. It is a perfect youth baseball hitting drill station. That being said don’t just use it as an extra station and let players whack away. Many coaches do this and it is ineffective. Players should be focusing on fundamentals and developing those hitting skills in all youth baseball hitting drills.

Why is it an effective youth baseball hitting drill ?

The tee is the best solution for just about any hitting problem. When we talk about “keeping it simple,” that’s just what the tee does. It always throws a perfect strike and never tries to deceive the hitter. Whether a hitter is having an issue with their stride, the timing of their weight shift, or just about anything, the tee provides a solution that allows the hitter to slow everything down and work on each aspect of the swing piece by piece.

Objective of this baseball hitting drill

When working off the tee, the objective is always to work on repetitions of a quality swing. Typically, you want to set the tee up so it replicates where you would be making contact with a pitch thrown right down the middle. That’s why you set the tee up out in front of your body, because that’s where you want to make contact to drive the ball to the big part of the field.

Set Up for Hitting off the tee youth baseball hitting drill

Here are a few different scenarios for setting up the tee to work on youth baseball hitting ..

The Corners – it’s great if you can drop the tee right in front of home plate (not on home plate) and actually stand in the batter’s box to take your cuts. This gives you a good reference point to move the tee to the inside and outside parts of the plate.
When moving to the inside part of the plate, you want to move the tee further out in front of your body because you need to connect earlier on inside pitches.
For the outside corner, move the tee back more – hitters must wait longer on outside pitches and hit them deeper in the zone. Setting up at home plate to work on hitting inside and outside pitches also helps to show the hitter where the ball should go – try to pull inside pitches and try to slap outside pitches the other way.  (Notice we don’t always try to pull the ball as many coaches and parents think )

High-Tee – For hitters who struggle to stay on top of the ball and hit a lot of weak pop ups,  place a bucket under the tee. This will raise the point of contact to the highest part of the strike zone, where a hitter won’t be able to generate any really power unless he or she manages to stay on top of the ball.

Big-Ball Tee – For hitters who struggle to swing through the ball, we sometimes place a soccer ball or other large ball on the tee (it helps to place a plunger, upside-down, in the base of the tee in order to easily hold the larger ball in place). Players have to really shift their weight and swing through the ball in order to hit it with any authority off the tee.

Conclusion
When you set a tee down or have a station for youth baseball hitting using the tee, be sure  and give your players specific things to work on: weight shift, hitting out in front, a level swing, coordinating the timing between the lower and top-half of the body, etc. DO NOT simply let your hitters blast away on the tee without putting any thought into it. That just wastes everyone’s time.

Who Else Wants To Be a Better Hitter in 1 Week ?
Explosive Hitting Package