Coaches Corner: Practice vs In Game Reps

Date: February 14, 2019
By: Brendan Dougherty

Baseball is a game of repetition. We hear that phrase used all the time by people in the industry. In order for you to develop yourself you have to spend time on things that will allow you to progress and get better over the course of your career. We have the ability to go out and find a coach or instructor that will give us reps during the week is the 45-minute lesson once a week enough reps? Is being out at your practice every day going to give you enough reps to develop your game? If you answer these questions with yes then you are probably going to be watching from the bench and wondering why you are not playing.

Baseball is a game where you have to be able to consistently repeat either your delivery or your swing to have success. The only way you can have a consistent correct delivery or swing is to train that way. I ask kids all the time if they are good at Fortnite. How did they become good at it? The same thing applies for anything you want to be really good at. You have to spend time doing it correctly. On average an MLB player gets between 700-1200 swings per week and between 350-500 ground balls per week. I understand that it is what they do for a living and they have more time than the average player.

If you can work to get half of those numbers then your development will steadily increase. We are in a day and age where we think playing is better than practice. How do we get the reps we need when we don’t have a coach or we are not at practice? Here are a few different ways for position players to get reps when those things are not available to you:

Infielders: Between Innings Ground balls

3 Per Inning (At-you, Forehand, Backhand) Game speed feet/throw

21 Reps Per Game

84 Reps Per Week (4 Games in a week)

840 Reps Per High school and Summer Season

Catchers (when not in the game) Should be done with full gear on

Catch in Bullpen (Every 3^rd pitch should be a runner stealing 2B/3B footwork)

Receiving (Count amount of balls that are dropped during bullpen session)

OF’s

BP- Play balls live during BP (Flyballs/Ground balls) Situation should be different for each round of BP

Hitters

If you are in the lineup or not you can get AB’s. Have visualization AB’s during the game. Get prepared like you are going to hit. Helmet on, Batting Gloves and go through the AB in the dugout. You can get 4-5 extra AB’s a game.