In our last newsletter we discussed sacrifice bunt fundamentals (click here to read). This week I will give you a great drill that you can incorporate into your next practice. Bunting isn’t looked upon as an exciting part of our game, so when doing the drill make sure to make it a competition and involve a point system to keep the players into it.
You also want to teach players to place the baseball near one of the two foul lines and not bunt it back to the pitcher. This drill will definitely help with that. Also let them know that players who are good bunters can add 20 to 30 points to their batting average and on base percentage. This not only helps the individual, but the team as well.
Alley Drill
1.) Set up 4 cones about 10-15 feet from home plate. Two on the 3rd base side & two on the 1st base side.
a.) Place one cone on each foul line and another cone 2-3 feet across from it in fair territory.
2.) Player tries to bunt the ball between the cones (alleys).
3.) Use a point system: 1 pt. for fair ball, 3 pts for a ball that goes through on of the alleys and 5 pts if it hits a cone and stays in fair territory.
Make sure that no points are given if the ball is bunted extremely hard or does not go outside the dirt circle of the home plate area.
