Baseball Batting Drills for Kids: Tee, Soft Toss, Live

Most youth batting practice is a coach lobbing pitches to one kid while eleven others pick grass. The kid gets eight swings in fifteen minutes and learns nothing from them, because a ball moving through the air is the worst place to fix a swing. The baseball batting drills below run in an order: dry swings, then the tee, then soft toss, then live. Each step is easier to repeat correctly than the one after it, and each drill here names the flaw it fixes and the age it fits.

This is the hitting spoke of our coaching baseball hub. The full list of drills by skill is in the youth baseball drills master list. This post is just the bat.

The Setup Before the Swing (Grip, Stance, Tee Position)

Most beginner hitting problems happen before the pitch. A kid who sets up wrong swings inconsistently for a reason that has nothing to do with the swing. So the setup gets taught first, by hand, one piece at a time.

1. Grip. The bat sits in the fingers, along the callus line, not in the palms. Firm but relaxed. The line the coaching books use is that you’re holding a bird: tight enough that it can’t leave, loose enough that you don’t kill it.
2. Stance. Beginners get the square stance, both feet the same distance from the plate. Weight even, on the balls of the feet. Hands about 5 to 7 inches off the body, around shoulder height, bat pointed up and angled slightly back toward the body. Head turned to the pitcher, both eyes on him.
3. Tee position. Stem at the hitter’s mid-thigh. Lead foot just behind the stem, so the ball is out in front of the body. To find the distance, have the kid take a swing and stop it at contact. The hands aren’t fully extended there, and the ball should sit on the sweet spot of the barrel. Move the tee to match.

Teach one of those at a time. A kid who’s struggling is almost always trying to fix two things at once. Put him in the position physically, because most kids can’t copy a demonstration, and a kid who has never felt the correct position won’t find it at game speed.

Baseball Batting Drills on the Tee That Fix Real Swing Flaws

The tee is not the beginner’s drill. It’s the drill. A big-league hitter quoted in one of the coaching books says his most important work still happens on a tee and in soft toss, because it slows everything down. That’s true at 30 and more true at 8. The tee gives a kid reps of a sound swing until the swing is the habit.

Line Drive

One tee, one net or fence, a bucket of balls. Set the tee so the ball sits where a pitch down the middle would be.

1. The hitter tries to drive every ball straight into the net at the same height as the tee stem.
2. Count line drives in a row. A pop-up or a grounder resets the count.
3. Have him try to beat his own number next round.

Ages 6 and up. Fixes: nothing in particular, which is the point. It builds the swing that hits a line drive back up the middle, and the count keeps a six-year-old interested.

Two-Tee, Forward and Down

Two tees in a straight line, 12 to 18 inches apart, stems at the same height. The ball goes on the front tee. If you only have one tee, put a bucket behind it with a small cone on top of the bucket, at the same height as the stem.

1. The hitter swings at the ball on the front tee.
2. He has to hit it without touching the back tee, or the cone.
3. If the bat clips the back tee, the barrel dropped and the swing has an uppercut in it. Try again.

Ages 7 and up. Fixes: the uppercut, which is the most common flaw in youth swings, and the dropped barrel that comes with it. Keep the bat head up as long as possible on the way to the ball.

Inside and Outside Tee

One tee and a home plate. Before the drill, the hitter “measures up”: he takes his stance and reaches out with the bat to touch the far side of the plate. That’s his distance.

1. For an inside pitch, put the tee in front of the plate, on the inside corner.
2. For an outside pitch, put the tee off the back outside corner of the plate.
3. For a pitch down the middle, put it straight in front of the plate.
4. Give most of the reps to the outside pitch, because that’s where pitchers work.

Ages 9 and up. Fixes: the kid who only knows how to hit one pitch location. Contact point moves with the pitch, and this is the only place to teach that slowly.

Double Tee on Command

Two tees. One on the front outside corner of the plate, the other on the inside corner, 6 to 8 inches farther forward. A ball on each, every rep.

1. The hitter takes his stance and loads.
2. As he loads, the coach calls “inside” or “outside.”
3. He hits the ball on the tee that matches the call.
4. Reload both tees. More calls of “outside” than “inside.”

Ages 10 and up. Fixes: the swing that decides where it’s going before the pitch arrives. It’s the first drill here that makes a kid react, and it’s still a tee.

Soft Toss and Individual Toss

Soft toss is the best hitting drill available at any level, and the reason is specific. It has everything live batting practice has (timing, tracking a moving ball) in a setting where the kid can actually repeat a sound swing, and where you can see it. Kids adjust in soft toss. They don’t adjust in live BP, because they’re too busy surviving it.

Soft Toss Into a Net

A net or the backstop fence, a bucket of balls, a feeder who kneels off the hitter’s front hip. Four kids per station.

1. One kid hits, 20 balls. The feeder tosses to the contact point, out in front.
2. The other three don’t stand there. They pair off to the side and pitch golf-ball-sized wiffle balls to each other until their turn.
3. Rotate. Everybody hits, everybody feeds.

Ages 6 and up. Fixes: timing, and the gap between a pretty tee swing and a real one. Toss out front and away to teach a kid to go the other way.

Individual Toss With Wiffle Balls

Pairs spread along the first-base line, hitting into left field. Leave plenty of room between pairs. Wiffle balls, so nobody spends the drill chasing.

1. The feeder tosses, the hitter steps, swings, and drives it.
2. He returns to his stance and waits for the next toss. No walking around between swings.
3. For the kids who can already hit, toss inside and outside so they learn both.
4. Swap after 20.

Ages 6 and up. Fixes: reps per minute. Wiffle balls give younger kids a lot of swings in a short time, and the whole team hits at once instead of one at a time.

Knee Drill

A tee-ball bat, a feeder, a net. The hitter kneels on his back knee and holds the bat in one hand, top hand, with the other hand across his chest.

1. For an inside pitch, the feeder tosses to the hitter’s inside knee.
2. For a pitch down the middle, to the belt buckle.
3. For an outside pitch, to the back leg.
4. One hand on the bat the whole time.

Ages 9 and up. Fixes: the upper half, in isolation. With the legs out of it, a kid can feel what the hands and the barrel are doing.

Live Hitting Without Eleven Kids Standing Around

Live swings still matter. They’re the last step, not the first, and they need organizing or they turn back into lobbed BP. The organization is a count.

1. Three or four kids per station. Round one, each kid takes 15 live swings.
2. Round two, 8 swings each. Round three, 5 each, until it’s time to rotate. The numbers drop so the reps stay sharp instead of sloppy.
3. The kid who isn’t hitting is reloading the tee at the next station, helmet on.
4. Rotations run 12 to 17 minutes with the move built in.

In a coach-pitch league, the live station is where you pitch from the real game distance, from one knee. The ball comes in flatter, and a flatter ball is easier for a seven-year-old to hit. Whoever pitches live needs to throw firm strikes. A practice pitcher who bounces one off a kid’s ribs has undone a month of tee work.

Which brings up the kid who’s afraid of the ball. He steps backward before or during the swing, and he can’t hit that way. Before live hitting, have him take his stance and toss tennis balls at him, with a few wild ones to dodge. Make it a game, then move up to baseballs when he’s comfortable. Youth players need to hit at a speed that lets them succeed, or nothing gets learned.

The tee looks babyish, and the coach who skips it because of that is spending the hour on the one drill where nobody can fix anything.

Which Drill at Which Age

Age	Run these every week	Add later
6 and under	Line drive off the tee (count it), wiffle-ball individual toss	Soft toss into the net once they can hold a stance
7 to 9	Line drive, two-tee, soft toss into the net, wiffle individual toss	Tennis-ball fear drill before live rounds; live rounds with short counts
10 to 12	Everything above, faster, plus inside and outside tee, knee drill	Double tee on command, live rounds of 15, 8, and 5

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the best way to practice hitting a baseball?

In order: dry swings, the tee, soft toss, then live. Each step is easier to repeat correctly than the next. Fix one flaw at a time on the tee, before the ball moves. Most youth coaches run it backward and start with live pitching, the one step where nothing can be fixed.

What is the best drill for batting?

The line drive off the tee, counted in a row. It’s boring. It builds the swing that hits the ball back up the middle, it works from age six up, and the count keeps a kid on it.

How do you teach a kid to hit a baseball with power?

At youth ages you don’t, not directly. Power comes from the sweet spot and a level swing plane, and the two-tee drill teaches that by punishing the uppercut. The coaching books frame the tee as the tool for power, contact location, and concentration. Swinging harder is not on the list.

How many swings should a kid take at practice?

More than he’s getting. At a well-run station a kid takes 20 off the tee, 20 in soft toss, and live rounds of 15, 8, and 5. That’s over 60 swings in one rotation. The kid in the lobbed-BP line got 8.

Sources

• Drills and Instruction for Coaching Youth Baseball
• 101 Championship Baseball Drills
• Coaching Baseball For Dummies
• Coaching Youth Baseball (American Sport Education Program)
• The Baseball Coaching Bible
• Baseball and Softball Drills: More Than 200 Games and Activities
• Practice Perfect Baseball

The tee isn’t the beginner’s drill. It’s the drill, and the coach who stays on it all season ends up with hitters. Next up: throwing drills, which start at the feet for the same reason hitting starts at the tee.