Looking back to my high school playing days, I remember setting up my red pocket net (which is currently in our cage at Maryville College) in the driveway with a tee, and I would just hack away at baseballs. I would hit 3 to 4 buckets of baseballs and call it a day. I would judge if my swing was on point or not based on the quality of contact. Looking back on this metric makes me cringe. I would hardly ever move the tee around. I would just place that baby right down the middle. This created a very fragile swing to anything offspeed. When creating practice plans over the past two years, this was seared into my brain. There has been a push towards more game-like practice for hitters. This is for the better but when you transition to a polar opposite, you often lose the positives of what you once did. Here’s more on my journey back to implementing the tee into our program and why. 

I was listening to Ahead of the Curve podcast with Jonathan Gelnar and Caleb Longley. Click here for that podcast. In the podcast there was a quote from Caleb, “Those that hit often, hit often.” I have heard this said before but it applies strongly to this situation. I have spoken about how the flips at Keystone park helped my bat speed for my last two years of college. You can also read that here. I look back and realize that the days I spent hitting off the tee, I was doing the same thing. I never took a swing that wasn’t max effort. Was this right? In some areas no, but in some areas yes. I can see now that all of these swings made my body into the power hitter that I was. I would often get questions like, “doesn’t that hurt your back?” No it actually doesn’t because I do this in every swing. Think back to when you’ve thrown a baseball as hard as you can after not throwing regularly. Now think about when you threw a baseball as hard as you could when you had been throwing for a while, consistently. Which one hurt more? It was more than likely when you had not been throwing as much. It is the same thing with swinging a bat! If you want to build bat speed…you have to swing hard often. Now let’s think about how often you can take a swing that is close to as hard as you can swing off a tee. Now how often can you swing as hard as you can off a hard slider machine? This is an easy one to answer and it’s off the tee. Now should we swing as hard as we can off the tee like I did? No! There needs to be a healthy balance. When you start taking ownership of your swing, the blend of swings that you need to take in training becomes more evident. The next question is how do you get players to realize the proper way to use a tee?

We have figured out better ways to develop bat speed since the days of me hacking away in my driveway. I have fallen in love with our bat speed program that uses Superspeed Slugger. These are sticks that have a weight at the end and vary in weight. The weights are underload, regular and overload comparatively to a regular bat. I love these sticks because they do not resemble a bat. I like this because it takes away the association of swing mechanics. Other programs that I have tried involved hitting a baseball and this took away from the main goal…building bat speed. With these sticks it cements that there’s only one goal. So now that we have a solidified program to build bat speed, what are the benefits of the tee? I believe it is to build proprioception in the box. This means to have an idea of how the body needs to move to have success in the box. When it comes to skill acquisition, I cling onto something that I heard in a MCTI podcast with Saun Huls. You can find that here. 

1. Do it slow
2. Do it at speed
3. Do it at speed with fatigue 
4. Do it at speed with fatigue and pressure

I see tee work being in the first category, doing it slow. This is controlled practice where we should be able to repeat movements over and over with a high success rate. This is where I lost connection with my hitting philosophy. I totally bypassed this step and just went full tilt with gamespeed practice. The other problem that I had was how can I trust my players to use the tee effectively. There are two ways that I’m going to try to make sure this happens as little as possible. The first is by writing this blog. Some of my players read my blogs so if that’s you, thank you for taking the time to understand this process! The second way is by creating a test for the players. This test will show if you have an understanding of how to use the tee and if you can perform the task efficiently. Coach Helton and I have created a player packet and this is included. I will also include the page about our bat speed routine. 

This journey on my usage of the tee is an example of many parts of my life. When learning a new bit of knowledge it is easy to completely disregard/forget what got you to the place you are today. The tee will always have a place in baseball training. The biggest factor for this is that it is the most accessible training for hitting by yourself. To keep the tee a quality part of a hitting routine, each swing must have a purpose. Once we have defined that purpose and achieved that purpose, it’s time to move on to the next portion of your training. I’m excited to see our guys build their own hitting routines this fall and what role the tee has in it! Thanks for reading and if you’re interested in hearing more thoughts like this use the discount code BLOG100 to get $100 off your Connecting the Dots Baseball Conference ticket! Go to CTDBconference.com .

Bat Speed Program

1.   This is for SPEED not FATIGUE.

2.   Take your time. 10 seconds in between swings.

3.   No thoughts…just swing as fast as you can

4.   1 set per color… i.e. 3×3=1 red, 1 blue and 1 green

5.   Add and subtract based off speed of swings.

Protocol

1.   Regular swings- 3×3

2.   Opposite swings- 3×3

3.   Happy Gilmore dominant side- 3×3

4.   Happy Gilmore opposite side- 3×3

5.   From knees- back=forth or dom./opp. side

6.   Standing (hips square) back + forth- 3×3

Tee + Front Toss Test

·    Tee + front toss work can be beneficial, but they also can be a colossal waste of time

·    There must be a purpose behind every swing taken.

·    Goal à Pass or fail

Tee Test

·    Pick 5 different goals

·    Location + height (launch angle) are your goals

·    Placement of tee

·    70% success rate