How to Improve
on Throwing
Drills for Baseball

Using throwing drills for baseball to help you improve your players throwing skills is a big job. As a youth baseball coach anytime you can assist your players to help their chances of staying in baseball is great.

Hitting is a major component of keeping players careers going in baseball. If a player can hit and help their teams significantly score runs they are more likely to keep a baseball uniform on for a while.

The same goes for throwing. The better equipped a baseball player is at throwing hard and accurate the more likely they will stay in uniform.

Teach Baseball:
Help Kids to Throw a Baseball

Helping players improve their ability and skills to catch and throw the baseball is a terrific benefit to youth baseball players. As a youth league baseball coach one of your best coaching assets would be to help baseball players throw the ball better.

Having the teaching baseball knowledge and coaching clinic skills to teach throwing is a rare commodity in baseball America today. Since you may not have the knowledge to teach baseball throwing techniques at least you can create throwing drills that encourage players to throw long toss and increase arm strength and throwing accuracy.

The Move to the Big Field:
Baseball Throwing Drills

Youth baseball players up to 12-years old can very often compete fairly well even with poor throwing technique, poor arm strength, bad throwing fundamentals and lack of throwing accuracy.

The ball field dimensions are small enough that poorly skilled throwing technique players can still ‘survive’ and play the game effectively. The little league baseball player is not really ‘exposed’ by their poor throwing abilities.

They can still hide enough especially if they run pretty fast or are physically matured enough to hit the ball with some power. The problem is when the youth league player moves to the thirteen and older field dimensions.

Now the player cannot hide for too long. Excluding 1B maybe, the spotlight will be on the player now. The throws from all the positions are much longer.

If the throws will not ‘carry’ to the bases, are not thrown with some velocity, or on target most of the time then ‘Houston, We have a problem.’

So, this is why it is so important to teach players to use good professional baseball style throwing technique and fundamentals at an early age.

Realize that much of throwing ability is God given genetic talent one is born with. So, at some point the player will throw the way the player will throw no matter how good their catch and throw techniques are.

Reluctant to Play Long-Toss:
Defensive Drills

Human nature is such that most youth baseball players take the path of least resistance. If the baseball coach tells the team to go warm-up and play some catch this is what most will do.

Go to the outfield and get about 50-60 feet from their partner, toss about ten or twelve easy throws and then go sit down in the dugout.

Very few players will play long-toss catch on their own without an explanation why it is so important to throw the ball from a long distance.

To properly long-toss the players should work their way back to at least twice the distance of their base lengths plus 50 feet.

The One-Foot-Catch Game:
Top Throwing Drills for Baseball

When developing a baseball drill to help players throw better this is an excellent choice. It is a fun practice throwing drill with fun game competition, too.

To set up and play this fun practice throwing game have the players pair up with their partner in playing catch format.

1. Players are safely spaced apart and in even lines all equal distance from their catch & throw partners.

2. The players on the outfield foul line will all have the baseball.

3. On command from the coach the players on the foul line throw the ball to their partners.

4. If the ball does not hit the ground and the player can catch the ball with one foot on the ground without moving the one-foot (like the first baseman stretching for a throw) the pair stays in the game.

5. On command from the coach or a player-leader the entire group throws the ball back to their partners on the foul line side.

6. Coach or player will say, “Five steps back,’ or “three steps back,” and the group opposite the foul line will all move back accordingly.

7. The game continues on with the players making good throws and catches ‘staying in’ and the others that let the ball hit the ground or stretch without keeping one foot stationary are ‘out’.

8. The game often lengthens out so the throwing distance is pretty far.

9. A final pair that survives the longest is the winner.

More Options:
Fun Baseball Drill

• Add a two-step rule or a two –step and a dive rule especially for less skilled players and to keep the game lasting longer.

• Give the players a ‘do-over’ mulligan if they miss play a catch or throw early in the game especially for younger and less skilled age groups.

• No lobsies: players should throw game speed. Hard, firm throws only—no high rainbow throws.

Really nice fun baseball drill for any age group, especially good for summer baseball camps. I usually call the game the Kit-Kat Catch Game because in my summer baseball camps I give the winners in each age group a Kit-Kat candy bar.

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Look at our Guide for Baseball Coaches for more Throwing Drills