I have two boys 8 and 6 who love baseball. We are having a blast throwing, making up ground ball games, playing pepper, and just finding new ways to have fun with baseball.

8 year old starts kid pitch if they have a season and wants to work on it. We do long toss a lot...work our way to 90 feet and make a game out of it (who can throw it better).

Do you know of a good mound we can buy? Is it necessary as they get older?

These come recommended, but look to be tough to do a windup on?

https://playerschoicemounds.com/collections/pitching-mounds-1/products/8-intermediate-portable-pitching-mound-playable-portable-affordable

Agreed, that one looks fine.

AustinCountyAg said:

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FWIW the 8yr old will be much more consistent out of the stretch anyway instead of the windup. Kids that young have a hard enough time being consistent with their motions out of the stretch much less a full windup.

That mound would suffice.

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That makes sense...thanks for the tip!

Just wanted to echo all the earlier comments. That mound should be more than adequate. Have him master pitching out of the stretch, anyway. There are so many base runners for the first two years of kid pitch, that he won't get much opportunity to pitch out of the windup for a while.

Just watched trevor bauer bulid one on his youtube channel.

I recommend buying a portable pitching mound with a little more width. It will make it easier to pitch out of the windup. The other advantage is to be able to practice pick off moves.

I recently bought a Pitch Pro 486 Pitching Mound for my son. He is in love with it. Works great and is made with fiberglass so perfect to leave it outside. I saw a list of the top 10 pitching mound options on a site and it led me to the 486. Looks like there are plenty of other great options, but felt like the fiberglass core was the way to go.

If you're buying or building one, do it bigger than you think is necessary. The mound I built for my oldest to practice on at 9 was outgrown before he was 11- his natural stride would take him almost completely off the end. Rather than keep it for my 7-year old I gave it to a buddy for his boy to use.

These aren't cheap but you can build one for a whole lot less pretty easily.

https://www.portolite.com/blog/portable-pitching-mound-new-product-oversized-stride-off-game

I've come to like these stride off mounds better than most of the other artificial mounds because the kid is always going to be striding off the mound while with a whole lot of the artificial mounds are either too short for a kid between about 4'10" and 5'8" where their natural stride tends to put their landing foot at the very bottom of these mounds and they frequently slip off. And on larger size mounds where the kid is supposed to land on on the mound get slicker than goose crap in a tin funnel and the kid still slips down the slope of the mound. With the stride-off mound they're landing on flat ground no matter what.