Practice #3--soft toss drills

It's one of the most basic of all baseball activities--just one coach (usually Coach Mike), sitting on a bucket or down on one knee, tossing baseballs to a Mudcat hitter, who then pounds them into the net. The soft toss drills, which are usually one of three stations when the team is spending an hour in the batting cages, take place at the far end of the cage, so it's not always easy to see what's happening down there. Plus, let's be honest, there's not as much shade on that end. So what exactly is happening down there at soft toss and what are some of those terms your Mudcats are throwing around?

No wasted swings. Coach Mike is a stickler for this. It takes more effort than you would think to compress 20-25 swings into a short amount of time. Around swing seven or eight, it's easy to only take a half-hearted swing, or maybe move the hands a little more slowly. That's a wasted swing, and they're the enemy of a good soft toss session.

Squish the bug. They're not actually killing insects down there. If they were, then you'd be asking for tips to try and ward off the legions of mosquitoes that seem to live in and around Nowell Field. Instead, "squish the bug" refers to the rotation on the hitter's back leg. To generate some torque and power, they're trying to rotate their hips into the ball. If it's done well, that rotation usually ends with the back foot twisting to follow the hips. It looks like, well, it looks like the hitter is squishing a bug. In this case, that's good news.

Balance. There are seemingly endless moving parts to a good swing. One of the toughest to remember is also one that seems like it would be the easiest: staying balanced. By the time the hitter works on getting his hands through to the ball quickly, and moving the hips into the ball, and keeping their head on the ball, it's easy to get out on his front foot. They should try to stay balanced, and there may be some props for future practices as a reminder.

Load. It's sort of the swing before the swing. As they're preparing to start moving their hands to the ball, the hitter moves their hands back an almost imperceptible bit. It can also help as a timing mechanism, and it's one of the first fundamentals of hitting the younger kids have to learn, because their first instinct is to chop straight down on the ball.

That's a little glimpse inside one of the hitting stations, which took up the first hour of practice. The second hour began with a relay race around the bases against the Bees. The Mudcat 5-year-olds (all ages in this blog refer to West Raleigh league age, which is far more important than actual age), Brenner and Asher, led things off. As the older players began to run, the Mudcats got great sprints from Tyler and Charlie that closed an early gap and put the Mudcats handily in the lead. That lead was maintained through the rest of the race, and Christopher capped the victory with a picture-perfect slide into home plate. The Mudcat coaches issued a follow-up race challenge to the Bees coaches, but the Bees decided to cut their losses with just one defeat on the afternoon. At least, that's why Coach Andrew said they weren't running.

The Mudcats split into two groups for an outfield relay race that served as a reminder to always follow their throws, then broke into groups for infield and outfield stations. At a post-practice meeting, Coach Andrew introduced (or reintroduced, as was the case for returning players) the tradition of issuing Mudcat batting helmet stickers for exhibiting certain parts of the Mudcat Motto. On Saturday, the assistant coaches kept an eye out for players exhibiting good leadership, listening and sportsmanship, and awarded stickers to Sticks and Asher (who is desperate to have a nickname but doesn't really understand what a nickname actually is).

Enjoy your Sunday off...the next Mudcat practice comes Tuesday at 5 p.m., with the team on the field first and then in the cages ready to squish some bugs.