The Web Glove Mini Training Baseball Glove

How can a simple web glove mini-training baseball glove change the trajectory of your baseball career?

Story time. 

When Ozzie Smith was a Rookie, he would be a late-inning defensive replacement at Shortstop. Not an easy task because if you’re a pinch hitter, and you don’t get a hit, well that’s baseball.

But if you are a pinch-defender and you don’t make the plays, that’s not good.

Ozzie had a philosophy that he adopted early on in his professional career while on defense.

If at any time he felt hesitant at his position, he would be more aggressive toward the ball.

In other words, he would go into attack mode.

Enter the Finger Web Glove.

3 Web Glove Drills By With Trent Mongero

In the video below, Coach Trent Mongero breaks down three drills to help with fielding accuracy with the Web Glove.

• The Roller
• The Short Hop
• The Press

You can purchase your Web Glove here at the Applied Vision Baseball store.

Finger Web Glove Philosophy

To train the glove, we train the brain. Training with the Finger Web Glove is about turning a game of inches into a game of centimeters. 

By making the room for error even smaller, we can fine-tune our hand-eye coordination so that when we go back to catching a real baseball, our tools are even sharper than if we had spent all of our defensive training time just catching a regular size ball with a regular size glove.

The Finger Web Glove is great for:

• Saccadic vision skills. (Prediction of the trajectory of a moving object)
• Framing pitchers for catchers.
• Picking the ball for infielders and first baseman.
• Catching fly balls in the outfield.
• Using as a glove during waffle ball games.

How Does The Finger Web Glove Work?

You simply slide in your thumb and index fingers in the two larger slots and your middle finger in the third smaller slot (optional).

Once you’ve achieved a snug fit, you can open and close the Finger Web Glove just like an actual glove but with a smaller entry point.

The goal of this Applied Vision Sports Web Glove is to help young players develop a genuine love for the game and to make practice fun - because if you’re having fun, it’s almost impossible to not get better.

With that said, here are some defensive philosophies that training with a webbed glove will teach you.

To Train, the glove, train the brain.

It starts with training your brain to want the ball.

When we are anticipating making the play, we put ourselves in the best position to catch, receive and transfer the ball to our target.

It’s an intention.

When we train the brain to react to the ball off the bat, we are learning how to compete.

We’re teaching ourselves to expect to make plays.

This is one of many important mentalities we need to take with us as we work on our glove skills.

Use The Web Glove To Learn The Hops

Infielders, listen up. 

In order to put ourselves in a good position to field the ball, we have to learn to recognize the different types of hops that come off the bat.

Important: there are four types of hops:

• long hop
• short hop
• in between long hop
• in between short hop

With this in mind, we can choose to file the ball:

• conventionally
• with a drop step 
• with a forward pick

If we get a long hop, we field it normally. The head is down, the back flat, and the butt up, while fielding the ball out in front.

If we get the short hop - we have to pick the ball. Still, the head is down, the back is flat and the butt is up, fielding the ball out front.

When we get the long hop, we will need to drop the step. We start by creating space and distance between the bounce and our glove so we have time to adjust to the ball, seeing it all the way into our glove.

With the between short hop, it’s time to "go get it”!! We will need to turn the in-between short hop into a short hop in order to make the play clean.

So here’s the million-dollar question - how do we know when to drop-step or to go get it?

Sometimes it depends on the speed of the runner, or your general arm strength, but a great rule of thumb is to go get the ball to avoid an in-between hop.

How Do We Work on Picks With The Web Glove?

Train to pick the ball with your finger web glove with various forehands, backhands, and conventional picks.

From here, you will get the feel of seeing the ball all the way into the glove without being “hand-cuffed”.

How To Be The Best Fielder On Your Team

We start by having an offensive mentality on defense while removing bad hops and cutting the distance on ground balls.

Oftentimes, the hardest play is the play to the right, and over 50% of our errors will be throwing errors

When we are seeing each pitch as a new situation, we are present, focused, and on time. 

Now we can trust our hands and our natural abilities. This is how we stand out on the field.

This is how we become great defenders.

The Web Glove Mini Training Baseball Glove Make You Game Ready.

Are you game ready?

Can you be and stay athletic when the game is on the line?

Can you compete with confidence independent of results?

Can you stay in the process, trust your approach and play the game with reckless abandon, or will you just be a showcase athlete - the player that looks great in batting practice, but falls apart in game situations?

It starts with intent.

Do you believe you are just as good if not better than every player in the opposing dugout?

Are you going to perform and demand that the opposing coach wished you were on their team?

It’s the little things we do over time that matter. The small daily habits and sacrifices we make to make sure we’re getting 1% better at our craft.

It’s not about being great=, rather it’s about being good consistently.

This is was a little tiny glove training aid can do for you. It can and will help you sharpen your skills, and add another tool to your toolbox.

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