YBE 028: The Art Of Smarter Baserunning

I wrap up my two-part series on important baserunning fundamentals for youth baseball players to make them smarter baserunners. Smarter baserunning makes them more complete ballplayers. Yet coaches at the younger levels are routinely chastised for teaching kids anything other than station-to-station baseball. The irony is that if we let kids play sandlot baseball—with no parental supervision—you'd see kids always being instinctively aggressive on the basepaths and the smiles on their faces from having freedom to run intelligently. Baserunning is a great example of how well-meaning adults ruin the game for kids. If we as adults want to give the kids a great experience with youth baseball, let's teach them smarter baserunning.

Plus, Justin Stone of elitebaseball.tv answers the Question Of The Week about whether it's better to teach timing first and then mechanics or vice-versa.

In this 48-minute episode, you'll learn:

• how to teach baserunning while encouraging kids to not be afraid to make throws
• 4 drills related to running from 2B to 3B
• 5 drills related to running from 3B to home

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Part 1 of the series on baserunning fundamentals
• Teaching The Complete Baserunner book
• Run Expectancy table from FanGraphs

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