Eli’s practice plan

Eli's got the bat speed and the range already — none of this session is about adding tools, because he doesn't need more. It spends every minute on the two things that quietly hand games away: taking a professional two-strike at-bat instead of a big hack, and getting his feet under him on the routine grounder so the easy out stops turning into an error. Nothing here is flashy, and that's the point — the boring plays are the ones he's been giving away.

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Set the tee a little deeper in his stance than he'd naturally put it — back toward his back hip — and move the target to the opposite-field gap. Every ball this round goes the other way, and pulling is off the table even if the ball is sitting there begging for it. He stays back over his legs, lets the ball get deep, and works his hands to the inside of it so the barrel stays on the ball a beat longer. Start easy — this should feel like he's guiding the ball to right-center, not trying to crush it.

The reason to lead with this every single session is belief. A dead-pull hitter doesn't actually believe he can do damage the other way until he watches it happen off the tee, over and over, with his own eyes. Twenty-five balls driven cleanly into the opposite gap is quiet proof that the oppo swing isn't a weak, defensive, just-make-contact swing — it's a real one. That belief is exactly what lets him trust it in a game when he's down two strikes and everything in him wants to pull-and-lift.

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Every pitch this round is a two-strike count. He chokes up half an inch, widens his base slightly, quiets his stride to a small controlled step, and shortens his path to the ball. The only acceptable result is a hard line drive back up the middle or to the opposite gap — no lift, no pull, no big finish. Move the toss around on purpose: a few middle, a few on the outer third, and a couple up and out of the zone he has to either spit on or foul off. He does not get to take his "A" hack on any of them.

This is the at-bat that's been costing him games. With two strikes he's still trying to do damage — pull and lift — so he chases the pitcher's pitch away and up and walks back to the dugout. A shorter, oppo-minded two-strike swing solves two problems at once: it lets him actually cover the outside pitch he keeps getting beaten by, and it turns him into a nightmare to strike out. The goal isn't a pretty swing. It's a stubborn, foul-everything-off, put-it-in-play-the-other-way at-bat that wears a pitcher down.

Now flip the goal from hitting to not hitting. Roughly half of these tosses go deliberately up — above his hands, out of the zone — the high fastball he loves to chase. He wins the rep by taking it and loses the rep by swinging, even if he'd have made contact. Have him say "ball" out loud on every pitch he lays off, so the take is a decision he's making, not a swing he happened to hold.

The high fastball is the single pitch getting him out, and it isn't a swing problem — it's eyes and discipline. His eyes drift up with the ball and his hands follow. Training the take rewires that, and it does something bigger: a hitter who calmly lays off the pitch up forces the pitcher to come back down into the zone, where his real swing lives. Laying off isn't passive. It's how he takes the at-bat back.

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Roll him routine, catchable grounders — and put a few of them slightly to his glove side so he has to loop his path around the ball instead of stabbing straight at it. He approaches under control, gets his body behind the ball, and fields it moving through it: right foot, left foot, and the throw comes out of that rhythm instead of from a dead stop. The feet never fully stop — they gather and go.

Here's the thing about Eli specifically: his hands and his arm are so good that on the routine ball he speeds everything up, plants flat-footed, and short-arms a rushed throw — and that's exactly where the easy error is born. Rounding the ball forces his feet to stay alive and in rhythm, which is the physical opposite of stab-and-rush. When the feet keep flowing, the throw comes out on time and accurate without him having to think about it. Calm feet make a clean throw; that's the whole chain.

Straight-at-him routine grounders with one hard rule: he cannot release the throw until his feet are set and his weight has shifted from his back side toward the target. Exaggerate it on purpose — field, gather, feel the throwing-side foot plant, then throw, even if it feels a half-beat slow. Ten of these where slow-and-accurate is the win and quick-and-wild is a loss, even if the quick one would've been on target.

The lesson living underneath the drill is a mindset, not a mechanic: the routine play has time. Eli invents urgency that isn't there — a two-hopper hit right at the shortstop is one of the least time-pressured plays in all of baseball, and he's been playing it like a bang-bang play at the plate. Proving to him, rep after rep, that "set your feet, then throw" still beats the runner by a mile is how the panic drains out of it. The great infielders make the easy play look boring on purpose. Boring is the goal.

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Deliberately stack the deck against him: mix good reps with rigged bad ones — feed him an in-between hop that handcuffs him, call a swinging strikeout on him, roll one under his glove. The rule is that after every rep, good or bad, he runs the same tiny routine — step back off the spot, one breath, a quick tug of the glove or the batting glove, say "next pitch," then reset his feet and get ready. Same exact routine whether he just made a diving play or booted a beach ball.

The reason to practice it after fake failures is simple: a reset you only run when things are going well isn't a reset, it's a celebration. He needs the motion to be so automatic that a real strikeout or a real boot triggers it with no decision required. Baseball is a game of separate, unconnected pitches, and the reset is the physical habit that keeps a strikeout in the third from riding out to shortstop in the fourth. This is the drill that stops one mistake from becoming two.

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End it competitive. Set a target or a small zone out in the opposite-field gap and give him ten swings — he only counts the ones he drives cleanly to that spot. Make him call it out loud — "oppo gap" — before each swing, and keep score together. The number to beat is yesterday's number.

Closing this way pulls the whole session into one point: the two-strike, other-way approach isn't real until he can produce it on command, to a spot, with the small pressure of a number on the line. And it sends him inside on a rep of doing exactly the thing he's spent the whole spring avoiding — driving the ball the other way on purpose — and succeeding at it. That's the note you want every session to end on.

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One thing to watch today: on the routine grounder, do his feet keep flowing through the ball, or does he stop, stab, and then rush the throw? And after a bad rep — a whiff, a boot — does he actually run the reset, or does he stew on it? The routine play is decided by the feet, and the next play is decided by the reset. If both of those are calm in the backyard tonight, they'll be calm on Saturday.

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