Slow Pitch Softball Batting Practice Drills – Basketballs & Bunting

Try these slow pitch softball batting practice drills with your team to improve your teams hitting skills. The effects are immediate!

My girls were stopping their swings during games recently and this reminded me that I hadn’t done this batting “basketball” drill in awhile. We broke out this drill and after only 4 hits with the bb drill the girls were hitting doubles and triples in the next game.

Take half deflated basketballs and place them on a tee. Have the girls set up in a normal batting stance. When they swing it forces them to follow through and shows them whether the stopped the swing or not.

PURPOSE: This increases the power of the swing but also stops that half swing that causes the ball to just drop on the dirt. It insures that they remember to follow-through on the swing.

Bunting-
I teach my softball team that bunting is as simple as “catching the ball with the bat”.

To show this, I have the athlete stand in the batters box in sacrifice bunting position squared up to the pitching machine without a bat. We use lite-flite foam balls and pitch to the batter. The right handed batter then literally catches the ball with her right hand; a left handed batter catches the ball with her left hand. Those are the hands that control the location of the bat.

This works really well when trying to teach a right handed hitter to bunt from the left side, because in most cases she usually catches the ball with her left hand anyway. You could also use a harder ball and have the batter wear a mitt on her catching hand. After a few successful catches or deflections (it is sometimes difficult to squeeze the foam ball with a bare hand), put a bat in her hand.

You should find improvement in eye-hand-bat-ball coordination resulting in improved bunting skills which should carry over to improved hitting as well.

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