The Little League Coach

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No Excuses

All coaches should be using soft toss during batting practice and pregame warm ups. There is no excuse not to. It is one of the most valuable drills to teach hitting and if you are not using it, start now!

Basics

That said, it can be so much more than it is. For those that don’t know, the soft toss drill involves positioning the player in front of a net, standing directly in front of him about 6′ away, and softly tossing balls for him to hit . This should be from the side, not the front, if you do it from the front, it isn’t soft toss, its batting practice! Two completely different skills.

Initially, you want to simply use the basic soft toss drill. The object of the coach or "tosser" is to "float" the ball on a tee right in front of the hitter . It should be a toss that seems to stop right where you want the batters bat to come through the zone. I call this "putting it on a tee".

This is great for little ones and for early season work outs. With practice, this drill becomes second nature. If your players are hitting every toss hard they are ready to move to the next level! Congratulations!

Next Level

The next level of soft toss focuses on hitting the ball in locations. Saturday before our softball game I was doing this with the girls and they were very successful! Our girls can knock the snot out of the ball, so while the repetition of the soft toss drill is good, they needed more.

I instructed each of them I was going to throw "out", "middle", "in". What I meant by this was I was going to toss the ball "on the tee" on the outside of the plate, middle of the plate, and inner half of the plate.

What I wanted to accomplish was:

Out - Get them diving into the pitch, hitting it in the back part of their swing and driving the ball to the opposite field

Middle - Getting them to hit the ball right in front of the plate and drive it right up the middle

In - Get them to hit it in the front of their swing and pull it down the line

I was pleasantly surprised how well this worked. Most of them needed a little extra work with "out", but this is typical for all ages, especially younger ones. Using this technique demonstrated what we have been telling them all year. When they succeed with it during a drill, they take this skill to the field with them. Then we can drive the ball all over the field and we are much harder to defend.

Do you have anything you do during soft toss to make it more effective, entertaining, or to keep the kids interest? Please share it with us.