Creating The Complete Baseball Defender: Drills, Routines & Techniques For Developing Gold-Standard Team Defense

with Dave Hieb, University of Northwestern - St. Paul (MN) Head Baseball Coach;
3x Upper Midwest Athletic Conference Champions (1996, 2021, and 2022);
2x in the NCCAA National Tournament (2007 and 2022);
2021 NCAA National Tournament participant;
#1 in UNW history for all-time career wins (505), seasons coached (28), and most games coached (1034);
Nine 20 win seasons, two 30 win seasons, and has recorded nine of the top ten win/loss records in UNW history;
Has worked with the Minnesota Twins Summer Instructional Program and MYAS Instructional Clinics

Coach Dave Hieb conducts a valuable video chalkboard session where he details all the best drills he uses to improve the position fundamentals for infielders, outfielders, pitchers and catchers. The coach takes the time to speak on the finer points of each drill, explaining the purpose behind the drill and how he has implemented each drill into his team’s daily defensive routine. During this time, Coach Hieb also highlights the importance of throwing drills that incorporate different arm slots to help prepare his players for game situations – which perfectly incorporates both team and individual drills into his practices, while providing plenty of repetitions so that players are game ready. He explains that a mastery of these key fundamentals are built on the back of many practice repetitions – adding that these mastered traits are the skills that carry over to game situations and lead to a winning culture.

Fielding Fundamentals

After completing the pre-practice chalkboard session, Coach Hieb takes his players through a position-specific warm-up period. The athletes put their techniques into action with a variety of ‘hand work’ drills. The drills are designed in the form of progressions, so that the athletes can work from a slow and focused-pace, and build up to a faster game-like pace. Coach Hieb instructs infielders to begin with basic ground ball technique drills, working specifically on hand placement and actions to utilize when fielding a ground ball. Coach Hieb then takes viewers through a full progression of catching drills designed to improve a catcher’s framing, blocking and throwing techniques. 

To finish up the position-specific period, Coach Hieb goes through a series of drills with his outfielders, designed to refine their techniques on ground balls, throwing and perfecting the proper angles to take while chasing and tracking fly balls.

Full-Team Defensive Fundamentals

Next, Coach Hieb transitions to a team defense portion of practice, which covers all aspects of defensive baseball and shows viewers how this critical work benefits both the team and individual aspects of defensive skill level. 

The team starts off with their ‘Double-Fungo Drill,’ where Hieb works players through a variety of game-like situations and forces them to practice receiving ground balls and defensive plays while moving at game-like speed. Coach Hieb transitions next to what he calls ‘Eagle Infield Drills’ that include work on PFPs, double-play technique and infield communication. This is followed by a thorough demonstration of the defensive ‘Mass Fungo,’ ‘Double-Play Fungo,’ and ‘Situational Fungo Series.’ Placing a perfect finish to this all-inclusive defensive practice, Coach Hieb walks viewers through an overview of Bunt Defense and an in-depth coaching discussion on catchers making live throws to various bases.

Coach Dave Hieb ‘covers all the bases’ when it comes to building and executing a defensive practice – including defensive philosophy, fielding fundamentals and full breakdown of how to conduct a practice that covers full-team defense that gets everyone involved with plenty of repetitions and work. 

This video provides baseball coaches with all the tools necessary to develop their players defensively and turn their squad into a group of players who consistently execute winning defensive baseball.

The manner in which Coach Hieb organizes his defensive practices, the variety of defensive techniques shown and the all-out energy displayed by both the players and coaches in this video, will be a great benefit to all intermediate and advanced level baseball athletes and coaches!

66 minutes. 2022.