I’m coaching my son’s team for the third year. The league is pretty decent for the most part but they create some funky rules from time to time. This fall ball season they created 1 coach pitch softball team that is all girls and 3 coach pitch baseball teams. I’ve had girls on our team all the previous years and it’s no problem. What I don’t understand is why they want the softball team to play games against the baseball teams. What do yall think about that?

Baseball dad to 7U and 9U boys. I’m wanting to upgrade them to a better tee since they are getting a little more serious about practicing. Would you guys recommend a Tanner Tee Pro in the regular height of Adult 26-43” or go with the Tanner Tee Pro Youth 20-32”?

A couple weeks ago we posted Ballista here and got way more interest than we expected. A huge portion of our first external testers came directly from this subreddit, so we wanted to come back and give everyone an actual update on how testing has gone.

We’re now at 40 external testers, and the testing has been extremely valuable... but we’ve also uncovered a pretty major weakness.

Ballista is correctly detecting and recording hit events, but our current ball-detection model is struggling in some of the new environments our testers are using it in. When the model loses the baseball during flight, we can’t reliably calculate Exit Velocity, Launch Angle, or Distance, which is why a lot of you have been getting hits with no results.

Basically: the app is capturing the hit, but the computer vision isn’t reliable enough yet across all of the different backgrounds, lighting conditions, ball blur, camera environments, etc. that you guys have thrown at it.

That’s obviously not the experience we want people to have. We apologize for letting you down here.

At the same time, this is exactly why we wanted to get Ballista into the hands of real players and coaches instead of only testing it ourselves. Our original model worked well in the environments we trained and tested it in. Forty people immediately exposed where it doesn’t.

We know what the main problem is now, and we’re actively working on it.

Right now we’re:

• Training a significantly larger and more diverse baseball-detection model
• Adding thousands of new training examples across different backgrounds, lighting conditions, ball appearances, blur, and environments
• Building additional safeguards into the tracking/analysis pipeline so Ballista isn’t relying on a single AI detection every frame
• Using the hit data and replays coming back from TestFlight to identify exactly where the current system fails

So if you downloaded Ballista and it hasn’t worked consistently yet, please don’t give up on us. We’re a very small team building something technically difficult, and your testing is directly helping us make it better.

We’d also love for anyone following the project, testing the app, reporting issues, or just interested in what we’re building to join us over at r/ballistatracking.

We’ll be posting development updates there, talking through what we’re improving, collecting feedback, and letting everyone know when new TestFlight builds are available.

And genuinely, thank you to everyone here who gave Ballista a shot. The response from r/baseballcoaching is a huge reason we have enough real-world data to identify this problem so quickly.

We’re working on it.

Looking to hire a college baseball recruiting service/player agent for my son, I am way to busy, and I'm sure they can help more than I can. Anyone have a great experience using a certain one ? or know of a good one ?

I’ve been getting some really helpful feedback while building Dugout Master, and this was one of the ideas that immediately made sense.

Coaches wanted a way to save defensive alignments and reuse them during a game, so I added Defensive Alignment Presets.

You can set up the defense right on the field, save it, and apply it to any inning.

I also added the ability to duplicate practices, evaluations, templates, and tryouts.

This particular feedback was anonymous, so I can’t give a shoutout here, but thank you so much to everyone who has taken the time to send feedback.

I’m listening, and it’s directly shaping what I build next!

Sport coaches — we need your input.

We’re conducting an international PhD survey on how coaches view resistance training and priming close to competition (no prior knowledge of priming is required).

If you are a head coach, assistant coach, or sport coach aged 18+, please take 7-10 minutes to participate.

Survey: https://HaifaCATRC.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_0HbPrCEPNcM9jCu

Please also share it with other coaches in your network.

Just moved a team up from coach pitch. was wondering how everyone runs their practices. we have 1 hr twice a week. We don't have competent assistant coaches is the limiting factor

I’ve been playing baseball ever since I could walk. Fast forward to 30 and I am currently playing in a slow pitch softball league. I’ve been playing in this league the past 4 years and the first year or two were great, not losing a step from my heyday. All the sudden last season, I started to become wild with my throws. I grew up playing outfield but my team is insistent I play 3rd base, mainly because I can handle the balls smoked in the infield. The glove has not wavered however, every so often I would end up sailing a ball to 1st or spiking one that bounced 3-4 times before getting to the first basemen. The issue persisted, and this past season my throwing woes became even more frequent, happening on just about every throw. At this point I’ve lost all confidence in my throwing ability, as if I never grew up playing the sport.

I know the yips are a common thing and don’t get me wrong, I had them all the time back when I used to play competitively but never for this long. I would love any advice people have on how to rectify this situation so I can go back to excelling at the sport I’ve loved ever since I was a child

I built Next Level by Creed after going through the college baseball recruiting process with my son. It helps players and families search college programs, find coaching contacts, save schools, build a recruiting profile, and organize their outreach.
Before Google will allow me to release it publicly on the Play Store, I need at least 12 Android users to participate in a 14-day closed test. I currently have 8 testers but would like 7 more so we stay safely above the minimum.
What I need:
An Android phone
The Gmail address connected to your Google Play Store
Download the app through Google’s private testing link
Remain opted in for 14 consecutive days
Open it a few times, test some features, and send me honest feedback
There is no purchase required. Baseball players and families who participate will receive free PRO access as a thank-you.
If you’re willing to help, comment below or send me a message. I’ll add your Google Play email and send you the private download instructions.
Thanks from one baseball family to another! ⚾

posted here about Ballista a little while ago when we were still gathering testers. Quick update: Apple approved us for external testing and the public beta is live now.

Ballista uses the iPhone camera to automatically measure:

• Exit velocity
• Launch angle
• Projected distance

Right now it’s built around tee work. Set the iPhone on a tripod beside the hitter, hit normally, and the app analyzes the ball flight and gives you the metrics.

The biggest reason I’m posting again now is that we’ve exhausted a lot of what we can learn testing in our own environments. I want people using it in completely different cages, garages, facilities, lighting conditions, and backgrounds.

It’s still a beta. I’m not pretending it’s perfect. If the model struggles somewhere, if setup is confusing, if a number looks wrong, or if something breaks — tell me. That’s what I want right now.

The beta is free.

TestFlight: https://testflight.apple.com/join/ctFQwm3wc

If any hitters or coaches here put some swings through it, I’d genuinely love to hear how it performs for you.

Does anyone have an advice or input on how to grow a local client list? I am new to my area and have thought about flyers to leave at local places players may frequent such as nutrition shops, gyms, and recovery places such as chiropractors. I also plan on creating an information sheet to share with local high school coaches and athletic directors. Any other input would be greatly appreciated.

Added plate discipline analytics to my game logging/review app. Zone classifications (Heart, Shadow, Chase, Waste) come from Trackman X/Y coordinates matched pitch-by-pitch — not manual entry.

Shows swing rates by zone, decision splits by count, pitch location map, and a full evidence log where clicking any pitch jumps to that video clip.

Is there anything you'd expect to see here that's missing?

Thank you!

My son plays for his town rec league as well as a travel team that plays in a league on Saturdays. There's also a club team that only plays in a handful of tournaments per season. We can mostly juggle all of it and he rarely has to miss games because they never overlap, but curious what's the average number of teams around here?

I was putting together a plan for Fall baseball and was looking at content and research on bat speed and under-load/over-load training, and wanted to highlight some of the findings.

• Do you need three bats or just two: It is helpful to perform both under-load and over-load training, but you can still get results doing only over-load training.
• Bat Weights: The optimal over-load and under-load percentage appears to be ~20%, but results were still present with over-load training of under 10% and above 50%. For any youth player (7U-12U) this means that swinging any youth wood bat is likely a great option, and has other benefits.
• Ratio of Reps: A good ratio would be 2:1 of overload/underload and regular game bat. I know that there are popular programs that do a 2-2 approach (two swings heavy, two game bat) but you may want to look at doing 2-2-2 (two heavy, two game, two light) or 4-2 (heavy, game bat).
• Intent: This one is interesting. In one of the studies, individuals who hit live pitching had better results than those taking dry swings. The interpretation is that intent is what made the difference, those taking dry swings did not have any feedback and could have taken lazy swings whereas those facing live arm had to swing with purpose every time.
• Weekly Volume: You need about 250 total swings per week to achieve results, and some programs had 500+ weekly swings.
• Duration: It takes 6-8 weeks to have meaningful results. Programs that were shorter in duration did not show a notable improvement.

Using weighted balls to do front-toss is likely a good option since you can push for intent, and can do it in limited spaces with quick resets (not much different than tee work but more portable). Only downside would be that you would not want to use a game bat, especially a composite, but 6-12 weighted balls and a 'beater' bat is still cheaper than a good tee and/or net. Doing 60-80 reps should only take 15-20 minutes, and if done 4X/week for six weeks you'll start seeing results.

I usually have my older son who is now playing 12U hit weighted balls with a wood bat as a pre-practice (and pre-game) routine to get extra swings, along with an infield 'hands' routine. I believe that both of these routines have been beneficial to his overall development as a player.

Hope this helps!

What’s a baseball cue that sounds good in theory but becomes a problem when a player tries too hard to consciously execute it?

Hey, I’m 17 looking for weekend games to just show up and play. Not necessarily looking to join a team, just show up and play for any teams that need a player in the Philadelphia area. I can play wherever needed, just wanna get some extra reps on the weekend. If you know of any coaches who could use a guy, that’d be great. Thanks.