David Klein

@supa2001 I mean yes, that’ll keep a flat swing, but it’s more about shoulder tilt and posture.

@CoachDavidKlein How to swing flat with a little upswing? Palm up palm down?

The physics of the swing as explained to Little League coaches. #baseball #baseballdrills #baseballtraining #legendscamps #youthbaseball

Cherishing every moment I get to coach this wonderful boy of mine. 🙏

Many youth coaches struggle to throw repeatable batting practice. Its just hard to kinda baby it in there.  I personally have no problem throwing BP when throwing firm, but if I have to slow it down, a 3 finger grip seems to always do the trick! MANY MANY MANY coaches have confirmed 3 fingers helps them too! Give it a shot and LMK what you think!

Every practice activity for youth should end with a competition. It just keeps em focused! Here are my 3 favorite games to do at the end of your catch play routine.

@WhatThewhat35 I do agree with that. A Stud nine-year-old should be getting as many reps as possible, even if it’s not at a super high level very kind of sucks to be riding pine playing majors

@CoachDavidKlein No reason a 9 year old should be playing at the majors level just to ride the pine. Thats exactly why I don’t support moving kids up divisions too soon when they’re young like that. Let them play with their peers to have fun and to learn to love the game.

Can we revisit the conversation around the Little League re-draft? When I was a kid, if you were really good at 9 or 10 years old, you got drafted to a Majors team. You sat the bench. You looked up to the 11 and 12 year olds like they were GODS. And eventually… you became the dude! The coaches were mostly the same every year. It felt like a real family. Real continuity. Real community. I understand why so many leagues moved away from this. Parity. Exposing kids to different coaching styles. I get it. But as a coach right now, I cannot tell you how much I would love to have the same kids back season after season. The development would be enhanced. The relationships would be deeper. The experience would just be better IMO. At the younger ages, 5, 6, 7 and 8 year olds, wins and losses don’t even matter. Many leagues don’t even keep standings. And most of those head coaches are coming back every season anyway. So why are we re-drafting? Why not just keep the same kids together and let something real grow? Give the last place teams first picks in the draft to keep parity. I’m not saying it has to be this way. I just miss what it was and think it should be a conversation again. Especially in leagues where retention is good and boards are capable of intentional design. Anyone have thoughts on this? Any history on how it all changed? First time I’ve really thought about it in years. #baseball #youthbaseball

@EddyBratz I sure hope you’re wrong! But it’s definitely not trending in the right direction. Some communities it’s growing some communities is shrinking.

@CoachDavidKlein Yup. Those days are over, little league got more political, more parents frustrated and thus club baseball took over. Little League won’t exist in 7 years.

@bournsa125 More replies, I’ve read them more out of like the merits of the re-draft system. There are definitely upsides to the 10 year system, but I just think for the greater good the redrafted is the way to go

@CoachDavidKlein In my area when teams keep the same players every year, and it looks like an A team and a B team, those leagues are the dying leagues. It’s not fun to be on the B team. A draft shuffles the players to make it fair. Our league firmly believes in this, and we have kept growing.

@JohnnyVanBee @OldMensBaseball I feel like four years of a crappy coach is basically the end of your baseball career in most situations unfortunately. In this situation, they are robbed of a meaningful Youth playingexperience. It’s a big deal.

@OldMensBaseball @CoachDavidKlein It’ll be ok. I promise. 😒.

@hoguey803 I kinda like the idea of giving parents the choice to enter the draft again. Sort of holds holds coaches accountable.

@CoachDavidKlein Around where I am, we keep our kids every year/ families can request to switch teams the next season. It makes zero sense to force kids to learn from new coaches every single season

@FIMartija I feel that

@CoachDavidKlein As someone who sees the benefits of keeping kids on the same team together, it goes against the mission of developing overall communuty. Keeping kids together reduces community into individual kliqs of 10-11 players. We need to train the coaches so they can teach kids equitably

@mstrymxer That’s a brutal scenario

@CoachDavidKlein And to add to that we cant play on saturdays bc the travel ball kids have tournaments. Its terrible what these other dads egos have done to LL baseball.

@tampaskypoint Yea kinda need really trustworthy strong perspective, coaches in order to make this work.

@CoachDavidKlein Essentially treating kids like assets in a fantasy league.

@tampaskypoint Yeah, I can see how this no re-draft system can go awry pretty quickly

@CoachDavidKlein Our league went away from this recently. Parity was an issue. Lack of coaching continuity too. Final straw was coaches trading players, plus tanking and recruiting kids to the park when they had top pick the following year. Hard to find enough quality adults, year over year.

@CoacHolly7 Not the same now. Not saying better or worse. Just different.

@CoachDavidKlein When I was a kid Little Keague was 9-12. That’s it. 9s and 12s together.

@ivscore17 Oooof

@CoachDavidKlein Unless you’re on a team with a coach who can’t or doesn’t know how to teach and develop players, or care for that matter. When I was coaching one team never practiced, just showed up on game days 🫣

@Jim_Ortbals Totally

@CoachDavidKlein I had so much fun,as did the boys I coached, from 9u to 13u. It was the same team, same coaches and a lotta memories we’ll all take forward.

@freshdonut20 Likely ya.

@CoachDavidKlein Because today’s parents would throw an absolute shit fit if their kid was on the “bad” team two consecutive years

@HarryDisaOG @JohnnyVanBee @AMNeid Redraft every year out here.

@JohnnyVanBee @AMNeid @CoachDavidKlein this is a bullshit take, LL has always had redrafts after 9/10 when going to 11/12…. players stay on the same team unless they opt into the draft between 9/10 and 11/12….. local leagues have died bc the bad kids don’t even come out anyomore.

@bournsa125 True. Positives and negatives to both ends of this.

@CoachDavidKlein Drafting a new team every year helps to prevent one team from getting too dominant every year. And by the time the kid has graduated from LL, they will have been coached by most of the coaches and been teammates with different kids. It’s another way of building community.