Quote Originally Posted by ShotgunDawg View Post
A few thoughts on the development of young baseball players:

- Play with other good players that push your child.

- Play in the yard ALOT. Play whiffle ball, hit rocks with broom sticks, hit bottle caps, hit sunflower seeds, etc. The hit tool is not being developed currently in America because travel ball is only offering kids around 15-20 ABs a weekend while Latins playing in the streets are getting hundreds of ABs and ground balls in that time span. Baseball is 99% standing around or sitting in the dugout, and this does not offer a quality developmental path. Playing games is good, but, if you want to be bad ass in this sport, you must gain a feel and improvisation skill that only thousands of reps and pure instincts can provide.

- LEARN TO THROW! Most high school baseball players in America can't throw and it limits thier opportunities to play different positions, which limits their chances of finding a position that they can adequately play and offensively profile at. Not everyone can hit for enough power to profile at 1B or LF, but by learning to throw with a clean, compact, fluid arm action, you open up a world of possibilities for your bat to find a place on the field.

- Learn to dance and play other sports. MLB players have rhythm and excellent, light feet and body contro. Clunky white boys better hit for power or there is no place for them. Other sports teach these abilities.

- Don't worry about building muscle. Build flexibility and remove rigid, stiff, long actions from your game. Be quick, not strong. Have arm speed, not strength.

- learn to impact the baseball and generate bat speed. This piecey, pre-stride, opposite field, line drive stuff that infiltrated lessons across this country are a joke because they take the natural athleticism and rhythm away from a hitter. Most everyday ML players hit for some sort of power. Learn to do it.

Any questions?
This might be actually the hardest part to accomplish in today's world. When was the last time you saw kids playing an improvised baseball type game? When I was a kid, there were only 4-5 of us in the neighborhood, but our parents MADE us be outside all the time. We played different versions of baseball constantly -2 on 2 with a tennis ball and ghost runners, pepper, cup ball, pickle, shag, all the time. Kids don't play like that anymore.