Infield Secrets You Need To Know!

All right, what's going on everyone? Today we're looking at Bobby Witt Jr., young phenom. I can swing, I can field, it's super athletic. I don't know if you saw his play a few days ago, but it was sick, saved the game for them. And so we're gonna look at him today. I was actually just talking to our high school infielders yesterday about this. By the way, I've got this sweet shirt, I just realized, 2012. I don't know if you guys have shirts that you just can't ever get rid of. It's not so much that I think it's a cool shirt with spring training and Grapefruit League and all that, it's just like super comfortable. Had this now for 10 years and I'll probably have it for another 10 more, okay? So anyways, so Bobby Witt Jr., what I was talking to our high school players about yesterday, I talked about how major league infielders, when they field the ball, when they really do anything, but when they field the ball, everything looks easy, right? They make the routine play routinely. And everyone says, wow, look at their ability to slow the game down. Look how easy they make everything look, right? And so I think that's a huge key to fielding. Why are they able to do that? Well, one, they have experience, right? They've got a ton of reps, even though he's really, really young. They have a ton of reps, okay? But through those reps, what do you learn? You learn the most efficient way to move your body to field each ball, right? And so that is key. And we talk a ton when we talk about fielding mechanics, right? There are things that you need to do as a fielder that are gonna put your body in the best possible position to make the game look, not only look easy, but to be easy, right? It gives you the ability to successfully field the baseball. So just like hitting, we talked about how important barrel path is, right? My ability to get the barrel on plane with the pitch behind the ball so I give myself a better opportunity to be consistent. It's the same thing with fielding. Now, the only difference with fielding is that everybody, right? You go, you can find a hitting coach on every street corner. Like I can probably go next door to my neighbor's house and he's probably a hitting coach and probably two doors down is a hitting coach. Everybody coaches hitting. Very few people coach fielding, but fielding is no different than hitting. There's certain mechanics you have to be able to use that are gonna help you be successful. And so, you know, if you watch our channel, you know that we talk a lot about, you probably hear some of the same things over and over again. I wanna show you Bobby Witt doing those today. So when I watched this video and I put this out on our Instagram, right? And a lot of people have watched it. And so, here's what I see when I watch him, okay? The first thing I see is that there are no wasted movements when he fields the baseball. So if we look at his body right here, right? So here he is, he's ready to move, okay? He's in a thumbs up position, which we talk about all the time. His chest is forward. So he's in good posture, thumbs up. He's not like this. His chest isn't back like this. It's chest over, it's thumbs up. If you just rest your hands, just relax your hands, right? So if you just relax them, notice how your thumbs just kind of turn in a little bit. Now, if I put them right here, they're in, but we call them up because they're pointed this way, right? They're not like this, which would be thumb out. So just relax the hands. The thumbs come slightly in. Now the ball is hit. He's in athletic posture again, chest over. You're gonna notice as he moves into the ball, right? As he moves in, he's gonna go right foot, left foot. So we're always gonna go right, left field, okay? The goal is that we wanna feel this toe land when we catch the ball, okay? Seems very simple. Toe lands, ball in the glove. This seems simple. 95% of infielders that I watch don't do this properly. They've never been taught to time the ball. I need that left foot to land when I catch the ball because that gives me momentum going to where I wanna throw, okay? So players that don't get momentum are players that don't time their left foot up to the catch. Their left foot just gets in the ground super early and that creates dead feet. They're stuck in the mud. And now, one, the ball plays them instead of them playing the ball. But two, once they feel the ball, there's no momentum going through the ball. So if you have players that you're always saying, hey, get through the ball, get through the ball, get through the ball, watch their left foot. Make them time it up, all right? So I've gotta time that up right there. That is very key. And notice, as you start to put that foot down, right? So he's putting his foot down. He's starting to move towards his target where he's going to throw. So that's where the momentum comes from. Bang. Now, after you catch the ball, now you go right to left, left to target. So it's always, always, always, always right, left catch, right, left throw. The feet don't cross. He's turning a double play on this ball. He's throwing it the second. We go foot to foot, but we never cross. Feet never touch. Never have two feet on the ground at the same time. We have one foot on the ground. We have one foot on the ground, right? So it's not two feet on the ground at the same time. It's one foot on the ground. And now the foot lands and we throw, okay? So that's the footwork. Let's look at the glove work. Look how simple this is. So we go from a thumbs up position to a quarter turn of the glove. Thumbs up, quarter turn. Glove is presented early. So it's thumbs up, quarter turn. That's all it is. It's right here. Thumbs up, quarter turn. A huge problem I see with infielders is a late flash of the glove. It sounds so simple, right? We talk about glove presentation. You've got to present the glove to the ball. I have to do it. Well, that sounds simple, right? Oh, I want to catch the ball. I've got to open the glove to the ball. Wow, that sounds really simple. Like what kind of coaching is that? Go watch your infielders. Infielders flash their gloves so late, right? So it's like here, here, here, here, flash. And the ball doesn't go in the glove. Or it's, everyone has their own way of doing it, but there's all these glove flips. Some players come here. A lot of players like to hug their glove. And then at the last second, they go like this. It's like a drawbridge. And the glove doesn't open on time, right? So it's late flashes here. It's here. It's gloves that are out here and then come in from the side. It's all these different things. Look at how simple he does it. Wow, that looks so easy. How does he make it look so easy? Every movement's efficient. Quarter turn. You can't mess that up. You can't mess this up, right? It's very easy. And you just got to make sure you do it on time. The glove is open. The ball is not in view. I see so many players get to this position and the ball's through their legs already, right? So now I can't do this when the ball's 150 feet away from me but I cannot be late to present the glove, okay? Notice how the glove is open. The fingers are down. I see this a lot. I see fingers up, right? I always tell the kids, if there's eyes in your glove right here, you need to show the eyes to the ball. Sounds simple. Sounds elementary. So many players, old players, not just little kids, old players never show the glove to the ball. The fingers are not down. They're up. There's no surface area for the ball to go into. The ball needs to go into the glove. So if I'm like this, how's the ball going to go into the glove? Those players get hit with a lot of balls here. They get hit with a lot of balls here. The ball balances out. I go from here to here. Now I give the ball some place to go, okay? So I'm open, early, presented. I'm back flat. When the back gets flat, the hands get out. Now he can see the ball and he can see the glove at the same time. You must be able to see both the ball and the glove at the same time. If your hands get underneath you, typically it's because the back is vertical and not flat. So if the back's vertical, the eyes are back here. The glove comes back this way. It gets underneath their body. And now you can see the ball, but you can't see your glove. I want to be able to see both. I don't want to. I need to be able to see both at the same time, okay? So back is flat, hands are out front. When the ball goes into the glove, it is not caught. The ball is going in right here. The bare hand, we talk about being just off center. So not 12 and six, but just off center. This hand, I call it the control hand. You call it the bare hand, whatever you want to call it. It's going to trap the ball. The glove never closes, right? The glove isn't closing. He's not catching it and going in with his hand, take it out. It's a deflection. It's a deflection above the fingers. I deflect above the fingers. As I'm receiving the ball now, I bring the ball to the middle. My elbows go out. I call it a funnel because we're going from here to here, right? We're funneling the ball to the middle, but my elbows go out. My elbows can't stay in because I'll bang into my stomach and now I have hard hands. I receive the ball with my elbows out. It's like a quarterback getting ready to go, to drop back the pass right here, right? So he went from here to here, here to here, right? Elbows are out. Thumbs come to a thumbs up position again. So we go thumbs up. We go here and then we come back to thumbs up. Elbows go out. We're still in good posture. We're moving our feet right to left, left the target. We take the ball out of the glove with our fingers on top of the ball. Our fingers and hand are on top of the ball. Our arm is tight right here, right? So I don't take it out here. I don't take it out down. I take it out here, right? The angle of this arm is like a V. I need to be inside 90. So this is 90. Let me move over here. This is 90. I can never be outside 90. I want to be inside 90. So it's slightly inside 90, right? So it's like a V, right? My elbow is up. I'm inside 90. My fingers and hand are on top of the ball. Now it's a short arm action, right? He throws from a lower three-quarter arm action, almost a side arm action. Perfectly fine. What that does do is it allows us, if we're going to miss, we miss high. It allows us to throw uphill. If you're someone that comes up here and throws like this, you're going to spike a lot of balls down around the waist and feet of the second baseman. If I miss, I miss uphill, all right? So I miss up. So I'm always throwing uphill. I stay on my legs. I throw uphill. He throws and he follows, okay? So think about that. Now he does that naturally right now. He might've been coached yet. He might not have been. I have no idea what his training has been. His dad played in the big leagues. I know he was a pitcher. I don't know if he's an infield guy. I don't know if he's had great infield coaching. I have no idea. Some players get really good coaching and they learn this stuff. Some players field 100 million ground balls and their body learns the best way to field the ball, right? It's like survival of the fittest. The best players get to the big leagues, right? So sometimes athletic ability obviously helps with that. He's very athletic and he's gifted, but his mechanics allow him to be consistent and get to this level, right? And so again, whether he got these mechanics because he fielded so many ground balls, he said his body realized, well, that didn't work. Well, this doesn't work. Oh, well, that works. Well, I'll keep doing that. Oh, that footwork didn't work, but this footwork works. I'll do that. Like some players, that's the way they do it. But some players are taught this stuff. So with our players, we teach them this stuff. This is the stuff we're teaching them. We don't just say, go out there and field the ball and good luck, man. And if you can't field it, well, sorry. We try to teach them. These are the important things to do. So videotape yourself. A lot of people think they look like this. They see themselves on video and they're like, whoa. You know? So that's how you're efficient with your movement. If you just do the things I talk about right here, and this is a double play term, but this stuff works for everything. Works for throwing the ball across. It works for any position, okay? So I call these the basics and the fundamentals, but a lot of people don't teach fielding. A lot of people just say, catch the, hey, catch the ball, man. Or if you're a softball player, hey, catch the ball. You know? Like, yeah, catching the ball, that's the goal, but how do we make catching the ball easier? By doing these things. So hopefully that helps you out. Let me know if you have any questions in the comment section below. Subscribe to the channel, hit the notification bell, give it a thumbs up, all that good stuff. We'll talk to you later. And check out our infield course if you wanna learn all this stuff. I'll put the information up right now. We break it all down. This plus a thousand other things. So if you enjoyed this, you'll really enjoy that. We'll talk to you later. What do you need to be a great infielder? Okay, let's talk about the mental game because this is such an important part of fielding, and a lot of people don't talk about this. If a hitter hits the ball 90 plus miles an hour, the ball's gonna travel about 90 feet in a half a second. When I catch when my left foot lands, I get to the right, I brace, I go. So I'm gonna bring the ball here as my right foot starts to go to my left. When I take the ball out of my glove, my fingers should be on top of the ball. I don't take it out like this. I'm on top of the ball right here. But it's not just about fielding the ball again. It's about fielding the ball properly every single time. If you're just gonna wait for your team to practice, you're not gonna be a very good fielder. If you're just gonna wait to field at practice when your coach actually does fielding practice, you're not gonna be a very good fielder. If you think you're gonna get great fielding three to five balls in an infield outfield, you're crazy. You've gotta field a lot. And so you've gotta field before practice. You've gotta field after practice. You've gotta be able to do it on your own. Don't just wait for somebody to say, let's go practice infield. Go grab somebody and say, let's practice infield.