Clubhouse Gas
Casey: Today Coach Rodney Hennon from Georgia Southern University is back to talk with us about some more tips for infielders stay tune to Clubhouse Gas.
Rodney: In the hole to our glove hand side Bryan would have to fill that ball outside of his feet with 1 hand, okay. In that case he’s going to try to really work to get his hips around, alright go ahead back in line with the first baseman and at times his momentum is going to take him and a lot of times we got to reach for this ball outside of our feet, he may have to reverse pivot to get his front shoulder and hips back in line with the first baseman.
We talked earlier about making every throw right up here on top. Alright there’s some exceptions there too. That ball that we really have to work too got to get down in the line pretty good and here’s an example. Bryan may not be able to throw from right here. He may have to drop his arm a little bit, alright. But even when he throws from down here a little more on the side or 3 quarters, he’s going to keep his fingers behind that baseball, alright and not drop them underneath.
Let’s see if I can roll you a few over there. We’ll see if we got enough room here. Alright we’re going glove hand side. Let’s make him work on this one a little bit more. Now we got to talk about the ball hitting to the other side, our back hand side. We’re going to start out with what we call our V cut, okay now there again. If we have an opportunity to get our body behind the baseball and square it up we want to do so, okay.
That’s a decision we’ve got to make we’ve walked into the pitch, the ball was hit, open up, crossover. Now Bryan is going to make a decision at some point whether or not he’s going to need the back hand of this ball or he can get behind it and V Cut. On a V Cut, I’m just going to leave you a steel ball there. Again we’re gauging what is going to be the best hop we can get and at what point we can get there and once we do Bryan is really going to plant hard off that right foot, okay.
All his momentum right now, if he’s playing short stop, all his momentum is taking him toward the left field foul line. Okay, so he’s going to plant hard and get his momentum moving back through the baseball toward first base. Okay, now this is a play. Earlier we talked about the glove hand eye. Not concerned with that here. Alright, we may not be able to get perfectly squared up with this baseball so if we fill this ball a little bit more to our throwing hand side in this instant that’s okay, alright.
Because chances are to if we loose this ball in the exchange or bobble this ball we’re probably not going to have a play anyway, okay. But the key is that plant foot. We’re going to plant hard. Bryan is going to step across right over left and really work to get his momentum moving back toward first base and even more important that we get the arm on top to finish that throw and follow our throw back toward our first base. Alright let’s do a few here.
Alright, just watch his foot work. Alright notice how he gets behind the baseball and gets his body moving back through the baseball. Alright, he’s not going to stand straight up but everything gets moving back towards the first base. You don’t have to have the strongest arm in the world to be a good infielder, alright you can get away with a little less arm if you know how to use your feet correctly. Okay, now the backhand. Again, all hit to the same side.
Now after we’ve taken our crossover step we’ve traveling low we see that we’re going to have to backhand this ball and this ball and Bryan is going to open his glove up, he’s taking his glove hand elbow kind of up and out, right. He’s fielding this ball and if you notice again, he’s bent at the knees at the waste. He’s head is down, eyes are down on the same plain as the baseball and he’s going to fill this ball probably 6 to 8 inches out in front of his foot, okay, the glove hand foot.
Common mistake here a lot of times guys have a tendency to over run this ball. If I over run and feel the ball behind my foot, I’m going to loose sight of it. Alright but as he feels this ball, he spread this glove open, okay, we’re going to fill this ball a little bit deeper in our glove, alright the only time as infielder we really want to catch the ball more in our web as on the backhand play, okay.
We’re going to do this by taking our thumb and our pinky finger and kind of squeezing them together, at the same time Bryan is going to kind of lead through this ball with the elbow, he’s going to have a stiff wrist. He’s going to kind of lead through just pick through the ball slightly by leading with the elbow. I’ll roll it in there and kind of— okay.
From there again, right foot very important, he’s going to plant hard on his right foot, get his hands through his throwing shoulder and get back on top of that throw and again we want to exaggerate following our throw through to our target, alright. Once again our momentum is moving out to our left field. We got to plant and we really got to work on getting on top, right.
One thing that helps as we plant, take our chin and shoulder back toward that first baseman that’s going to help us get our hips around and get our arm up on top and get some momentum moving back toward first base, alright, right.
Now when we do these drills in the infield we don’t just feel the ball and flip it back to our partner. Notice Bryan gets his feet set every time, we don’t actually throw the ball but we always want to get into a position and get in the habit of being in a throwing position.
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