what's up Dan Blewett here let's talk about fungo hitting skills so first
thing let's discuss bats so this is obviously a full sized bat and you can
certainly hit ground balls and fly balls with these but as a coach if you're
gonna hit a hundred two hundred three hundred ground balls or fly balls in a
day this is gonna wear you out and you're gonna get tired pretty quick so
most coaches will use a fungo bat which I don't have one here with me but
they're just like this Little League bat they're just a little bit longer they're
about thirty six inches they have a skinny barrel they're very light usually
made out of wood and they're very easy to whip through the zone so you can hit
the ball really far you can place it easily and they don't tire you out
nearly as fast so this is an okay choice this is your second best choice like a
small Little League bat is a great choice we're hitting ground balls and
fly balls because they're light they're easy to and accurate to use and then if
you have a fungo bat even better okay so let's talk about how to hit a good fly
ball so number one a lot of coaches who maybe don't have a really long baseball
history have a tougher time hitting good fly balls to their outfielders and a lot
of times you'll see coaches hitting with one hand and this really just isn't
ideal because you can't generate enough bat speed typically to hit a really high
fly ball that will challenge an outfielder and replicate game situations
so it's ideal to use two hands on the bat number one and then there is some
technique to help you hit better fungos and better more repeatable fly balls so
when I use the term fungo it just means to that's the term for hitting any
practice fly ball or ground ball we use a fungo bat typically and we kind of
refer to everything as fungos but we're gonna hit fly balls in this video today
and so here's the general technique I'm going to use this little league bat
which is the best choice if you don't have a fungo bat so number one you're
gonna take your normal two-handed batting stance with your hands right
here just like this and you're just gonna take your bottom hand off so this
hand is ready in the position that you want it and then after that I'm gonna
square up to my intended target and then the biggest thing here is the toss so if
you're really hasty with your toss if you're just going really fast and your
toss are all over the place your fly balls are going to be very inconsistent
- so just like a hitter is very deliberate in the game about everything
he does we want to make sure our toss is very consistent so I'm gonna line my
feet up just like I'm hitting I've got my top hand on the bat I'm gonna toss
the ball up really just to about eye level slightly out in front of my body
so this is about where I would make contact with a ball in a game like a
line drive and so I'm gonna toss it a little bit out in front of my left leg
here and then lastly to hit a fly ball we're gonna get under it just a little
bit to make it easier to lift it so if you're swinging down it's going to be
tough to lift the ball so again the consistent toss just like if you're a
tennis player is extremely important to getting consistency in your fly balls
and lastly you don't have to swing super hard to get it far out there to get some
good height on it all you have to do is have a good consistent toss a good
uphill swing and you're gonna let your hands do the rest all right so now I'm
going to end this video with a quick slow motion just so you can see all the
moving parts of a good fly ball swing
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now today fly balls are difficult in their own right but pop ups are even
harder especially to get into the catcher because they hit a ball straight
up in the air it requires an extremely precise contact with the ball get it go
the exact upward angle that you want so with a regular fly ball if I'm hitting
to my outfielders I'm gonna toss somewhere out in front here this is kind
of my intended toss so I can make contact out in front and propel the ball
pretty far into the outfield however if I'm gonna hit it higher up in the air
the biggest thing that changes is my toss I'm gonna make a slightly higher
toss and I'm gonna go instead of getting the ball out in front I'm gonna go up
and meet the ball here because if I'm gonna try to get this steeper angle I
want to have my bat going steeper and I want to make a conic with the ball
higher up this is one of the hardest fungo skills to develop and it takes
practice so you're never gonna get these perfectly every time you're trying to
hit ten pop ups to your catchers you might hit too deep fly balls you might
hit four in the infield and you might hit two or three to your catchers the
more you practice the better it will get so I'm going to show you here real quick
on slow motion just the mechanics of a good pop-up and then I'll show you a
couple in real time here as well okay so here's a couple good hi catcher pop-ups
or infield pop-ups so I'm again I'm going to toss it higher up and I'm gonna
get under the ball that one's ending it's a little bit foul
and that was a good one that's gonna come down just a little bit behind me so
again the keys here number one are practice these are not easy these do not
work well at all one-handed so going higher up and climbing the ladder to get
it is the way to hit a good infield or catch or pop up
so there's two types of ground balls that you want to hit number one are
choppers and those are the short ones that will stay on the infield grass that
an infielder would charge and have to move through and then there are the
standard harder ground balls that we actually want to get a little bit of
like a line drive a little bit of a carry to them initially so we're not
going to hit all of our ground balls right into the ground but some of them
will kind of have a little bit of backspin carry for about 50 or 60 feet
you know 15 20 meters and then start to bounce and get through the infield so
especially on fields they don't have very short fast grass like it'll in a
lot of high school fields they'll have thicker grass and it's actually tough to
get a ground ball through it that's what we want a little bit of carry so it has
maybe like I said 15 20 meters in the air it then I'll have a couple skips
before it gets to our infielder so let me show you what those look like
so our cameraman here is gonna come a little bit behind me so you can see how
these ground balls are gonna carry a little bit farther and not just bounce
right away so this is type number one I'm gonna aim you know 20 meters out in
front and you're gonna see it's gonna carry a little bit before it starts to
bounce those are gonna be the hard ground balls that we want our infielders
to field that are gonna replicate again the standard hard hit infield ground
ball we're gonna have to range they're left to the right and work on fielding
you know balls with some speed behind them and then if we want to do an
infield chopper we're just gonna start here and we're gonna angle down and a
lot of times I'll choke up on the bat so with hitting infield ground balls the
big technique here to get some carry on it is just to have the toss out in front
and try to hit the bottom half of the ball so we're we're having a relatively
level swing just trying to get a little bit of carry initially rather than
beating it right into the ground but when we want to get a chopper that's
gonna force our infielders to charge and again move through I'm just gonna choke
up a little bit higher on the bat and then I'm gonna beat it into the ground
right away to get a good couple skips and hops so they have to move in and
work on you know charging and throwing across the diamond alright so those are
the two main types of infield ground balls
okay so final word on hitting good infield and outfield fungos coaches just
remember it takes practice just like the work that your players put in so it's
very very important especially with fly balls to get them really high up into
the sky that's how kids learn to judge these really big pop-ups the balls that
will swirl up in the wind the ones that get lost in that high sky when we don't
have any clouds so you know I really highly recommend against doing the
one-handed fungo because you just can't generate enough power for the vast
majority of coaches so just getting comfortable with two hands just like
your players have to get comfortable with new drills is a really important
thing and remember just like anything else with practice all of these get
better so take it upon yourself to consider it a challenge that hey maybe I
can get one or two really good catch or pop ups today but my goal by the end of
the summer is to get five or six out of every ten again all these skills take
practice they're not easy so stick with them and your players will benefit a lot
from in the long run I promise you that alright thanks for watching we'll catch
you next video
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