Free Baseball Practice Tips

• Baseball practice tips help players improve their game.baseball park image by Dave from Fotolia.com
  
  Baseball is one of the most well-known sports in America, and players must practice several facets of their game in order to develop their overall skill level. Baseball players must be able to hit and field well, and pitchers have the additional task of needing to keep their control in order. Drills and other practice methods can make these tasks easier to accomplish. By using free practice tips, baseball players of all ages can see their performance improve dramatically.
  
  

Pitching

• Pitchers must be able to control their offerings to be successful. During practice, pitchers must work diligently on their ability to command multiple pitches. To do this, pitchers can throw to a catcher who calls both balls and strikes. The goal of the pitcher is to strike out imaginary hitters for a specified amount of batters. Every time a pitcher throws three strikes before four balls, the imaginary hitters counts as a strikeout and the pitcher earns one point. Every time the pitcher throws four balls before recording three strikes, a walk is issued and a point is taken away. The higher the positive score, the better the pitcher has performed. This drill helps pitches to focus on simply locating strikes.
  
  

Fielding

• Another key aspect of baseball is fielding. There are several key factors to becoming a quality fielder, and during practice scrimmages players can work on all of them to hold opponents to the least amount of runs possible. To do this, players must practice remembering to hit the cut-off man. This means throwing the ball directly to another fielder so that runners do not advance to another base. Fielders should make sure to adjust toward right field for left-handed hitters and left field for right-handed hitters. When a runner is on first base, infielders should practice playing further back to increase the odds of getting two outs at once with a double play.
  
  

Hitting

• One important area of hitting is concentration. Baseball players must be ready for all sorts of pitches that vary in terms of velocity, movement, and location. To improve focus, players can participate in a drill where a coach kneels and tosses a baseball up for a player to hit in the batting cage. Once a player is successfully hitting the ball, the coach starts throwing two balls in different locations. The hitter must select one to go after while ignoring the other. After this process is mastered with two balls, a third is introduced. This drill is intended to make players concentrate on the exact location of a pitch. As more balls enter the equation, the drill becomes more difficult for the hitter.