Orioles coach Bobby Dickerson talks about working with Tim Beckham on improving Beckham’s defense. He wants Beckham to compartmentalize the tasks of fielding, and not worry about the speed of the game:
“We’re just trying to slow him down and take a little bit of the, for lack of a better word, ‘infielder’ out of him. The mechanical moves and different things that infielders do unnecessarily, especially young infielders,” Dickerson said.
“I don’t want to be naïve and say these are things he hasn’t heard before, but we just did some drills to try to slow him down and get him more focused on the process of getting people out versus the process of looking like an infielder. It’s a fine line. Circling the ball, field through the ball, all these different things. Bottom line is it’s really about just trying to find a hop to catch the ball, control it, keep your emotions in check and not let the game’s speed bother you and then throwing accurately.
“If you look at so many different things that cause bad throws, a lot of times it’s the body position after catching the ball because they’re fielding the ball versus catching the ball, and getting too heavy on the front side or not being loaded or ball transfer too late. There are so many different things. Trying to separate all the steps and make it more of a process of, ‘Once I’ve got ball control, now I just become a pitcher. Get myself balanced.’
Dickerson goes on to note that J.J. Hardy fields like this, and Jonathan Schoop made these changes as he matured.
from baseballmusings.com http://ift.tt/2ltNfyE
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