Baseball Defensive Drills

Good book for those looking for drills that can move their average and excellent players from the most basic fundamentals to intermediate (middle-of-the-road) and advanced techniques of baseball. The book breaks down every defensive position, chapter-by-chapter, giving extensive defensive drills to improve play at those positions. It also devotes a couple of well-written chapters to overall team drills. This book will have more application for older and/or advanced players. Many of these drills should be used with some 8 year olds. On the other hand, some of the more advance drills will be too advanced for even 12-13 year olds.This book does not contain drills for the most basic defensive techniques, such as the very beginning mechanics of throwing and catching. And even though these beginning mechanics are part of the mechanics taught in this book for pitching, infielding, and outfielding, the reader will have difficulty picking them up from this book. This book does a good job of capturing the essense of these techniques, and for the money, is a good, quick-reference, resource to have on the shelf. However, the book is limited, due to the printed medium, it is ability to adequately convey the many subtleties of baseball fundamentals; so some readers may prefer to study these techniques from video tapes, or a more graphic medium. Generally, I have been unable to find a comprehensive book that covers all aspects of the game: defense and offense, beginning through advanced drills. So overall, this book has improved my library and has filled a needed gap in understanding and coaching defensive baseball.

Some of my ballplayers (JV in high school) were having a very difficult time defensively. I started incorporating some of the drills from this book, a little at a time. Now, our team and individual defense has improved a great deal. This book breaks things down very well. It can help coaches at any level with their defensive strategies.