Friday, October 4, 2013

Brandon Crawford on the Importance of Fundamentals


I really dig the two Brandons' blog - just awesome baseball info all around.  I found this particular piece by Brandon Crawford on their Spring Training start particularly compelling, because it jives with what we teach these boys all the time on the importance of fundamentals.  Too many other teams out there seem so laser focused on winning at all costs, that they forgo the basics.  Read on and enjoy:

If you came to the first few days of workouts here this week, you might be surprised at our drills. They are as fundamental as a Little League practice.
Jose Alguacil, the minor league’s roving infield instructor, literally rolls the ball to us. The point is to work on footwork and on exchanging the ball from the glove to the throwing hand, though we don’t throw. It’s not like we forget how to do any of this. But we’ve been off for three months, so you want to regain your form one step at a time to make certain you’re doing everything the right way.
For batting, we start by hitting off a tee. You can set the tee at different locations. First thing I do when I get to the park in the morning is  take five swings at nine locations: up and away, up middle, up and in, middle away, middle middle, middle in, down and away, down middle and down and in. That takes about 15 minutes.
Then a coach tosses balls underhand to me, and I’ll hit for another 15 minutes doing that.
Yesterday, our third base coach Tim Flannery had a session on base-running. He gathered all the position players at first base. He reminded us that a player who gets 200 hits in a season spends only 42 minutes on base. “There’s no reason you can’t stay focused for 42 minutes!’’ he said.

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