Like many of the best pages on WebBall this started with a question from a coach about to head into a new season...

Q

I am a non-parent coach. I'm looking for a quick way to evaluate the kids that are on my team. Most of my players all want to play short stop. I have no idea the skill level of these kids or if it's their parents talking. Practice will start indoors in a couple weeks and I'm limited with space and time. Any drills or simple evaluation methods?

The answer is from WebBall's head coach, Richard Todd...

A

Great question, the kind I could talk about forever, but I'll try to be both relatively brief and reasonably insightful.

First, don't get me started on the parent factor. As far as I am concerned that is irrelevant. But here's a caution - if you think that by running any drills that help you determine the best for shortstop, you will somehow have parents who ever see the reality of the limitations in their own kids, you'd be wrong.

You can do throwing drills, lateral drills, challenge drills until their legs collapse and their arms fall off and you will likely have about 80% of the parents still thinking their kid did the best job at the drills and deserves to be shortstop.

So when I suggest drills, it is for you to evaluate (with a non-parent assistant coach or 2, I hope), and not to try to prove anything to the parents for or against.

So, let's break down what you need to evaluate...

1 Quick read on the grounder  
Ttough indoors when the ground surface is not close to what you will deal with outdoors. To compensate, try some scraps of carpet, thin pads, and the hard surface - anything to mix up the bounce characteristics of the ball. What you measure here is success out of a sequence of 5-10 "hits" to each contender. I would control the variables by using a pitching machine like the UPM to fire the balls into the carpet.

2 Lateral agility  
Moves from side to side - you can use two cones that have to be slapped with the glove - moving them progressively farther apart and timing the interval from dead center position to each side then the other side. In other words - one step each way, then two, then three. This will evaluate both initial quickness and also range.

3 Ball transfer and throw  
The fielder equivalent of a catcher's pop-time drill... have a receiver a certain distance away (as much as space allows) and toss the ball to each fielder, timing the interval from when the ball pops into his glove to the time it pops into the receivers glove. You could sub a net/target for the receiver to assess throwing accuracy as well (with no help from the fellow player). And you could separate out the throwing velocity factor by recording that on a radar gun.

4 Pop-up reads   
A next-to-impossible skill to assess indoors, the ceiling limits the "getting under it" factor. You could use a soft, bouncy ball (maybe a Jugs Lite-Flite) and bounce the pop-up to add a variable to the tracking and catch. - You'd have to experiment (the team I work with has already moved outdoors so I can't test this hard-surface bounce for you.)

But even with all that, even with some numbers and success ratios to determine skill levels, there are things like "instinct", "batter-read", "leadership" that are required of a shortstop. Even skill aspects like soft hands are really hard to put a number to, but you'll observe that by doing the rest.

In doing the above you will also learn who is best for 3rd and 2nd. For instance - best choice for second is the guy who is as good as SS in everything but throwing velocity. and the guy best for 3rd is the one who is best at throwing but not quite as strong as SS and 2B at lateral range.