Offensive Baseball Drills - Rob Delmonico

Offensive Baseball Drills

by Rod Delmonico

NEW, 184 pages

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About Offensive Baseball Drills

Help your team score more runs! In Offensive Baseball Drills, Rod Delmonico, Baseball America`s 1995 NCAA Division I College Coach of the Year, shows you 68 offensive drills he uses to take his teams to the top.

These drills help players develop important offensive skills, like maintaining proper body and bat control, hitting to the opposite field with a runner on first, deciding when to take the extra base, and many more.

The book includes drills that coaches can use in practice and athletes can use to practice on their own, including:

• 35 hitting drills,
• 20 baserunning drills, and
• 13 team drills.

Each drill features a full-page explanation of the drill`s purpose, equipment needs, and proper procedures as well as coaching points. And the facing page has either a photo that shows the key skill in the drill being performed correctly or a diagram of the field that shows how to set up and conduct the drill.

In the last section are the five keys to using drills effectively and information on how to incorporate them into practice. The section also includes sample practice plans for youth, intermediate, and advanced players.

Offensive Baseball Drills will help your team develop solid hitting, bunting, stealing, and running skills and score more runs in every game.

About Rod Delmonico

Rod Delmonico became head baseball coach at the University of Tennessee in 1989. In his first six seasons he led the Vols to three consecutive Southeastern Conference (SEC) Eastern Division titles, two consecutive SEC overall titles, and a 1995 trip to the College World Series (the school's first in 44 years). His many coaching honors include SEC Coach of the Year (1994 and 1995), American Baseball Coaches Association's South Region Coach of the Year (1995), and Baseball America's Coach of the Year (1995).

Rod also was associated with two of the nation's top collegiate programs, spending six seasons as assistant coach at Florida State University and two seasons as a graduate assistant at Clemson University.

Rod earned a master's degree in administration and supervision from Clemson University (1983).

A popular figure at coaching clinics throughout the nation, Delmonico was recently the featured speaker at the American Baseball Coaches Association Clinic. He is a contributing author to numerous coaching periodicals. His articles have been published in Scholastic Coach and Collegiate Baseball magazines and his first instructional book,Hit and Run Baseball, is now in its second printing.

Reviews of this Book

"Rod is a great coach. The book reflects his great ethics, team-building skills, and teaching talents. A must-read for all coaches."
Skip Bertman
Head Coach, 1996 U.S. Baseball Olympic Team, Head Baseball Coach, Louisiana State University

"Coach Delmonico's drills have been a big part of my success as a major leaguer. His expertise helped me to improve my game each year and he can help you too!"
Deion Sanders, Only athlete to play in both the World Series and the Super Bowl

About Baseball

Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each. The goal is to score runs by hitting a thrown ball with a bat and touching a series of four bases arranged at the corners of a ninety-foot square, or diamond. Players on one team (the batting team) take turns hitting against the pitcher of the other team (the fielding team), which tries to stop them from scoring runs by getting hitters out in any of several ways. A player on the batting team can stop at any of the bases and later advance via a teammate's hit or other means. The teams switch between batting and fielding whenever the fielding team records three outs. One turn at bat for each team constitutes an inning and nine innings make up a professional game. The team with the most runs at the end of the game wins.

Evolving from older bat-and-ball games, an early form of baseball was being played in England by the mid-eighteenth century. This game and the related rounders were brought by British and Irish immigrants to North America, where the modern version of baseball developed. By the late nineteenth century, baseball was widely recognized as the national sport of the United States. Baseball on the professional, amateur, and youth levels is now popular in North America, parts of Central and South America and the Caribbean, and parts of East Asia. The game is sometimes referred to as hardball, in contrast to the derivative game of softball.

In North America, professional Major League Baseball (MLB) teams are divided into the National League (NL) and American League (AL). Each league has three divisions: East, West, and Central. Every year, the major league champion is determined by playoffs that culminate in the World Series. Four teams make the playoffs from each league: the three regular season division winners, plus one wild card team. Baseball is the leading team sport in both Japan and Cuba, and the top level of play is similarly split between two leagues: Japan's Central League and Pacific League; Cuba's West League and East League. In the National and Central leagues, the pitcher is required to bat, per the traditional rules. In the American, Pacific, and both Cuban leagues, there is a tenth player, a designated hitter, who bats for the pitcher. Each top-level team has a farm system of one or more minor league teams. These teams allow younger players to develop as they gain on-field experience against opponents with similar levels of skill.

Offensive Baseball Drills