JUGS Lite-Flite Machine for Baseball and Softball

Máquina de picheo de gran calidad, excelente para entrenamiento de todas las edades,muy versátil y fácil de transportar...

Ordered this for my 8 year old AAA player who wanted to work on both hitting and fielding. He is primarily a catcher, so he also wanted to practice both catching and blocking pitches.This has been exactly what he wanted. He and I researched extensively and made lists of features for many different models. We both agreed that this machine seemed too notch, and we weren't wrong. He is in love with his pitching machine, and was able to build it himself. It's light enough for him to transport back and forth to our garage, and he found it simple to power with a few extension cords. We originally were worried about using it without a battery, but now that we've tried it, we'll stick with plugging it in since it's not a problem.He's saving up for the automatic feeder, so right now either myself or his sisters feed the balls for him to hit, which is very simple to do. Moving the machine to make slight adjustments is also very simple, and all components seem built to last. We've been extremely happy with the ease of use. It's also been great for practicing pop-ups.The one thing I will say is that, even after adjusting the machine to exactly where you want it, there are occasional pitches that are just off the mark. I understand that's to be expected with something like this, and that it's also more of what he'll see in a game, but sometimes I end up readjusting the angle only to miss my target by even more. I think the accuracy of the machine is somewhat determined by the way in which you feed the balls. But in general, we've been pleased with the accuracy.If you're on the fence or confused by all the different options out there, or even if you're wary of the price, I don't think you'll be disappointed if you take the plunge and purchase this. My son has had friends over recently, and this machine occupies them for hours, and requires very little input or help from me. If it's easy enough for a third grader to operate, but is also great for my 30 year old brother, it's clearly a machine with large appeal and versatility. I already see an improvement in his hitting. We are very happy with this purchase and look forward to using this for years.

I like this product. This is our second year using it and have no issues whatsoever with it. It does however have to use the lite flight balls in order to throw hard and accurately. That is the only downside to this item but it is much cheaper than the machines that throw real baseballs and softballs- in fact half price. You can buy a battery pack for it to be able to use it at the park, or run an extension cord if electricity is near enough. We have not tried the battery pack- we only use an extension cord. Other than that this is a fine item- a little heavy ( as it is mostly solid metal) to move around but that’s fine it needs to be, and can really help a batter time fast pitches, it is faster and more accurate than any softball I could throw myself. You can change the speed settings of the pitches and also change the angle the ball is released from the machine to simulate curves.) Also, feedback is direct. Balls have enough mass and weight that the batter can know if they hit the ball accurately and hard. You just won’t break any windows with these light flight balls. We use ours in conjunction with 30 feet of batting net and this set up is perfect.

maquina con excelente calidad y buena oprtunidad recreativa

I bought this for my 11 year old son two and a half years ago when he decided to switch from casual softball to serious baseball. It is a great machine for what it does. It has allowed my son to practice consistently, achieve better plate discipline and develop a better swing due to his ability to get in more reps than his friends.When I initially purchased the product, I set it up to test and the rubber on the wheel that pitches the ball spontaneously flew off at higher speeds, leaving me with a wheel with huge gouged out sections before I had even tried to pitch a ball. Amazon told me to contact Jugs directly which I did. They knew about the problem which had affected an entire batch of machines. I gave them my shipping address, they sent me a new one. It came in a couple days and all was well.After a frustrating first year of trying to locate all the balls he was hitting in our 5 acre field, I invested in a netted batting cage and a hopper for the balls so my son can go out and practice without someone needing to feed him the ball and without constantly needing to buy more balls because he keeps losing them.He is now 13 years old and plays against 14-15 year old kids who regularly pitch in the mid 70s with the better kids able to pitch in the mid 80s. This machine just can’t quite match up to that. At best, you will get close to 60 mph. The machine says that it can “simulate” speeds up to 85 mph, but just to be clear, that doesn’t mean the balls go that fast. They don’t.Luckily, we researched how to mimic hitting faster pitches with a slower machine. Because it comes down to reaction time, the solution was to move the machine closer to give yourself less time to react. There are several websites that give the math you need to achieve the relative reaction time based on the speed of pitch you are trying to mimic. The Jugs website says that at 25 feet, you will be simulating 85 mph. Good enough for us.Overall, this is a good solid machine that has taken more than a few direct hits from the Lite flite balls and kept on pitching. This is a machine we will be able to use for years for various drills and just to work on basic swing mechanics. It is also useful for kids who hit faster pitches if you adjust to account for reaction time. No buyers remorse here.

Mucha potencia buena maquina

The batting machine arrived within 2 days of ordering. We purchased it without physically seeing one. It is a well made, sturdy unit. It works very well and is a great value. Our 8 and 11 year old children love it . We highly recommend this pitching. machine. A+

We've had this for about a month now and have used it quite a bit. My son is 6 and loves baseball. He moved into a machine pitch league so we bought the machine for practice. The machine is well built and solid. It comes in two strong fabric cases (one for the machine and one for the legs) with 1 of each ball (baseball/softball wiffle, baseball/softball lite flight). It also come with 2 ball shutes for a baseball and softball. The whole thing is pretty top notch. Set up took about 10 minutes. This is mainly screwing the legs together. For baseball, I'd just leave the legs together when you take it down. That will save you 8 minutes right there. For softball, you only use half the legs so setup is pretty quick.You have to setup the machine for the ball you want to use. There are four distinct setups that require you to unscrew/screw a pressure plate for each size and style of ball. So if you have a mix of wiffle and lite flight balls, you can really only use one without having to re-adjust everything. And really, after ANY change you make, you have to re-adjust and calibrate the machine. It's pretty easy to find the sweetspot though after any change. In about 3-4 balls you can find the zone for fastballs. Curveballs seem to take me a bit longer.A lot of what makes the machine work for you is actually the ball you use. We have been using the lite flight balls almost exclusively. We bought 2 dozen at first but realized 4 dozen is the perfect amount of balls before we have to go pick them all up. They fly pretty accurately, usually in or around the strike zone. Sometimes in the wind they will get unpredicatable but never dangerous. I think it mimics a real pitching situation. The balls are foam, but dense, with very little weight. I got hit on a come-backer in the leg and while it didn't hurt that bad, it stung enough to get out of the way on the next one. Also, we were catching some pop flys with bare hands and that stung quite a bit too. My son also took a pop fly off the face that stung him pretty good but didn't leave a bruise. That said, my son doesn't fear the ball at all, even after getting hit in the face. The balls travel further that I thought they would. I don't have a huge backyard but he sends them into the neighbors yard once in a while. Whe he gets older we'll have to get a net.It doesn't work well for popups as the the ball is so lite it just pops out of glove so when we practice it is more for footwork and positioning. You can launch the ball pretty high for popups. Also, the wiffle ball that comes with it is probably the strongest wiffle ball ever made. It is way nicer than the Nike ones I have (Which incidentally work with the machine but are not very accurate and tend to slow down right before the batters box). The only other negative of the machine would be the speed control. You basically have to guess what speed it is. The Jugs Jr machine we have at the baseball field has a digital speed display. That would be great on this.So what about results? Well, he used to strike out almost every at bat and this weekend he went 5 for 5. I'll give the credit mostly to his superior genetics, but the machine helped quite a bit too.