Gloveless Fielding Drill

I find that a lot of times my youth players attempt to field the ball in the infield like they see the “cool” players do it, scooping it to the side or one handing it. So what I’ve done to help “re-train” them is this gloveless fielding drill.   This can be used with softball and baseball.

Gloveless Fielding Drill
4 positions (1st, 2nd, S.Stop, and 3rd)
1 coach on the infield grass facing 3rd and short, 1 coach on the infield grass facing 1st and 2nd. The players do not use their gloves for the first half of this drill.

The coach will throw ground balls to the fielders and they must field them without their gloves. This forces them into proper position because without their gloves its actually harder to “side scoop” or “sweep” the ball. It also forces them to use two hands to clamp down on the ball.

First we start out with moderately paced grounders straight at the players and gradually increase the speed and move the ball to both sides to get them to move their feet into proper fielding position.

After we have gone through several times with hard grounders to both sides then we allow them to put on their gloves and we go through it again several times.

Then the coaches back off and use a bat to hit the grounders. This progression should help get the players to think about the correct position when approaching the ball.