The Program: Building a Developmental Plan

Development is one of the most touted words in baseball today. Everyone "develops" the problem is not everyone tracks, makes adjustments, and builds plans that are ensured and tested to actually develop. Instead most rely on natural progression of athletes, and outside coaches/teams to build their players into what you see them as today. This is a Developmental worksheet that is meant to show what all will be covered in "The Program" and will be used to keep us as coaches accountable. Nothing will compare to what you come up with and for your athletes, but starting at a base level of tracking major metrics, and finding what works for you is a great place to begin.

KPI's

Defining what you value in your program is step 1. The KPI's or Key Performance Indicators are what you value for your program at a base level. These are important to identify in order to build processes that are designed toward achieving a positive trend toward the KPI. The ones that we choose are labeled below, and this is what we value and develop in our program. These are not in any particular order.

  • Throwing Velocity

  • Bat Speed

  • Pitching Command

  • Bat to Ball Skills

  • Running Top Speed (Baserunning IQ also plays a part)

  • Defensive Positioning/Coordination

  • Situational Hitting (Last on the list, these can be easily taught/manipulated by coach)

  • Situational Defense (Last on the list, these can be easily taught/manipulated by coach)

Program Philosophies

The easiest way to get off track is to develop KPI's and not build them into your program philosophies. It is extremely important that the values we place on every day items are aligned with our KPI's. The following are what we use as our philosophies.

  • Getting It Right > Being Right

  • Sub-Varsity will be a skill development program

  • First thought on programming should be whether this applies to in game, or towards what we’ve decided as Base level skills in baseball.

  • We need to develop Varsity baseball players from the talent we have in our program

  • Build multiple movement pattern solutions, and build ideal mobility for baseball players.

  • Take workouts like a chance to work different variations of base patterns (Squat, Hinge, Lunge, Push, Pull, Carry)

  • Micro-dose sprint work, all baseball fundamentals, and movement patterns every day.

Individual Skills Goals

When it comes to the individual skills development it is important to remember that by the end of the season all of these goals should be completed. All of these goals should also be taken as a developmental approach, and for someone who has a low level of skill and you are building them to be a varsity level player by the end of the year. This is 100% for the development of the athlete from any athlete.

Pitching

  • Build Velocity/Efficiency

  • Gain a 2nd Pitch

  • Hold the Run Game (1.3s to home plate)

  • Learn Basic Pickoffs

Hitting

  • Build Exit Velocity

  • Understand Leverage/2 Strike Counts

  • Execute a 2 Strike Plan

Defense

  • Be In A Physical Position To Make The Play

  • Know what to do when you get the Ball

  • Understand your role in the team defensive roles

Baserunning

  • Run With Full Intent

  • Learn To Make Own Decisions

  • Never Give Up On a Play

  • Take extra bases (Dirt ball reads, stolen bases, hustle doubles)

Team Skills Goals

Understanding and implementing your team philosophies and goals at the lower levels is extremely important to the building blocks of your baseball program. You can have all the talent needed to win games, but if they do not know how to execute team oriented skills it makes for some costly mistakes early on in your program. These Team Goals are what we focus towards when we schedule practice, and work on execution of baseball skills in a team setting. These goals are very basic, and I do not plan on expanding them too much. If we work towards these goals in our team setting then we will be a quality baseball team at every level.

Team Offense

  • 1 Run An Inning

  • Quality At Bat Every Hitter

  • Make the Defense Make an Extra Throw

Team Defense

  • No Unnecessary Throws

  • Catch Every Fly Ball

  • Keep Every Ball in Front of us

  • Defensive Positioning (Involved in play, backing up, covering a base)

Team Culture

  • Find A Positive From Every Play

  • Push The Importance of A process that leads to positive outcomes, positioning, hustle, good swing decisions.

  • We Will Lose games, We will Win Games, Feed The Program and find ways to build on what we do.