"Coach Gurney has tremendous insight into the game of baseball. Covering All The Bases is a fine book which covers numerous baseball fundamentals on an advanced level."
Lou Pavlovich, Collegiate Baseball

"Easy to follow and lucid. It reads well and clearly…the [book's] breakdown into boxes/sections is very helpful."
Alina Tugend, The New York Times

"The pitching fundamentals helped teach me proper mechanics and pitching techniques. These have helped me get to where I am today. In fact, several of the drills that I do on an every day basis with the Florida Marlins coaching staff were drills that were originally introduced to me by Coach Gurney."
Tom Koehler, Pitcher - Florida Marlins Org.

"Coach Gurney has spent a lifetime accumulating baseball knowledge, and in this book it comes pouring out. If you want to become a better player or a smarter coach, let Coach Gurney be your guide."
Mike Flam, The New York Times

"Coach Gurney and the L.I.F.T. Athletic Development Training Program provides detailed prehab workouts that I perform daily in my off-season strength maintenance regiment and ultimately helps athletes reach peak levels of performance on the field."
Ray Rice, Running Back - Baltimore Ravens

"I applaud Darren Gurney's instructional methods and the manner in which he teaches the fundamentals of the game. He combines his knowledge of the game with a keen instinct to detect and subsequently correct a mechanical flaw in the player and effectively deliver the message."
Roy Krasik, Senior Director – Major League Baseball

Covering All The Bases is an instructional baseball book designed to better educate coaches, players, parents, and baseball fans.

With dozens of baseball drills, including hitting drills for baseball and a break down of hitting fundamentals, pitching drills and specific pitching mechanics, hundreds of detailed baseball-skill oriented photographs, and an analysis of various baseball strategies, this book is an invaluable resource for anyone coaching baseball in Little League through high school baseball.

Pitching and hitting drills for baseball

Covering All The Bases: The Ultimate Baseball Handbook, is a comprehensive guide to teaching and utilizing proper mechanics for playing baseball including hitting drills for baseball.  With a simplified 3 Steps to Success teaching approach and highlighted sections for in-game strategies, teaching tips, topics of debate, and interpersonal aspects of the game, this resource is invaluable for players, parents, and coaches.

Coach Gurney explicitly teaches various baseball fundamentals through hundreds of detailed photographs in a frame by frame sequence.  In addition, with highlighted baseball terms and lingo, readers will learn how to speak in proper baseball vernacular.  The book contains a foreword written by MLB Hall of Famer Willie McCovey and includes a self-assessment baseball examination to help coaches reflect on their teaching/communication methods with players.  Sample practice plans, detailed team drills including hitting drills for baseball with field diagrams, and a strength development program make this handbook unique to all other baseball resources.

Elements of Hitting: Hitting Drills for Baseball

Hitting has been described as the toughest thing to do in all of sports. Given that major league and all professional hitters are measured by the benchmark of .300 (getting a hit thirty percent of the time), then successful hitters fail seventy percent of the time. With all of this failure, coaches, parents, and players need to be aware of the psychological toll it takes on baseball players, especially at the youth level.

There are a variety of hitting drills for baseball and fundamentals that players and coaches can implement that will improve players’ chances for being productive when batting.  Furthermore, an effective stance, grip on the bat, eyesight considerations, bat selection, and overall balance are determinants of positive outcomes at the plate as a hitter.   

A great deal of hitting drills for baseball starts with the feet.  Many hitters that struggle to make consistent contact suffer from poor balance and stride length, both of which stem from the feet.  As with so many athletic skills, the batting stance should have the feet at shoulders’ width apart or slightly wider. Players can jump off the ground with their feet shoulders’ width apart and land in a balanced, bent knee posture to find an effective athletic position. Some players widen their stance by moving their feet further apart to prevent an overly long stride. The key is to achieve a balanced base where the hips can be exploded from the starting position.

Another crucial component to hitting drills for baseball involves the upper body positioning in the stance, specifically the hands and the height at which the bat is held.  Players should keep their hands at least as high as the top of the strike zone.  If the hands start below the strike zone then it will be difficult for a batter to catch up with chest level fastballs.  This will result in pop ups, fly balls, and swinging through pitches.  A guideline for coaches is to have players hold their hands somewhere between the height of the top of their head and their armpit.  Ultimately, players must find their individual preference for the exact height of the hands without a mandate from coaches.

With an awareness of eyesight issues, players can take a far different approach to hitting drills for baseball.  Coaches and players can perform an eye dominance test to discover which eye is a player’s dominant eye.  For instance, a player that is right eye dominant can adjust his batting stance so that he has a full view of the pitcher with that eye.  The eye closest to the pitcher (left eye for a right-handed batter) is the more critical of the two eyes in a batter’s ability to track a pitch toward home plate.  Also, as he takes his stance in the batter’s box, the position and angle of a hitter’s head must be assessed along with eye dominance.

In addition, by selecting a bat that is too long or heavy for their size, many young players are at a disadvantage before even swinging at a pitch.  Coaches can have players hold the bat out horizontally extended at shoulder height for 10-15 seconds to check whether it is too heavy.  If the player struggles to hold the bat (at the knob) parallel with their shoulder for this period of time, then a smaller bat is more appropriate.  Some of the game’s greatest hitters, including Ted Williams and Tony Gwynn, prefer small, light bats. 

Hitters generally fall under two categories: rotational and linear.  Rotational hitters, as the name implies, rotate their hips as the primary generator of power.  This explosive turning motion provides the inertia for the bat to come through the hitting zone.  Linear hitters’ swings, in contrast, move in a forward direction with less emphasis on rotating the hips.  Instead, the weight shifting movement from back to forward generates the momentum for the swing.

Learn more about hitting drills for baseball in Coach Gurney's book, "Covering All the Bases," available now.