Today’s game of baseball is now led around by people with the ability to push analytics—both from the pitching side as well as the offensive side. I want to take this one step further and include the “stance” analytics has taken hold of the defensive side of the catcher’s position. First I will say that it makes me sick to my stomach to see what has happened to the very necessary art of teaching proper pitching mechanics. It’s almost non-existent in today’s game. Spin rates and velocities have far exceeded the importance of pitchers abilities to command/control/locate their pitches with confidence to actually thrive with duplicated performances while maintaining their own health. I can go on and on about this topic but I want to encourage feedback. On the hitting side launch angles and spin rates dominate all of the production of the offense in today’s games. Whatever happened to hit it where it’s pitched, drive your pitch when you get it, defend with two strikes, be disciplined as to the point don’t chase non competitive pitches. Home runs will come when they’re supposed to. Gap to gap hits score your runs. Finally I want to comment on defensive alignment of our catchers. In today’s games catchers land lock themselves by going down on one knee to receive the ball. Why do coaches even allow this? You have put yourself in a position that you can’t shift/move to block or throw the ball. I believe that both of those functions are very necessary to perform this job at the highest level. Also I don’t get why catchers rotate their hand/mitt clockwise to the point the mitt is practically upside down to receive pitches. If the mitt is positioned in the normal upright position then it’s where it needs to be to receive pitches inside on RHH or away to LHH. Don’t make the game tougher than it is.
Your first point, and pitching background, begs the obvious question. Do the pitching mechanics issues you reference apply to the Gator staff? Which would be interesting given the Pitching Whisperer moniker often used to describe O'Sullivan.
As you should expect, every pitcher carries their own mechanical issues. So, IMO the answer is most of our pitchers have things that they can work on to improve/handle the stress put on their bodies by pitching. I will quote Dr. James Andrews who made this quote directly to me, “throwing a baseball overhanded is the most unorthodox thing you can ask the human body to do”. He went on to explain the throwing motion of pitching fast pitch softball is throwing with the grain (pertaining to how the soft tissues are laid out on the human body). Throwing a baseball overhanded is against the grain. That is why proper pitching mechanics are so critical to not only longevity but command, control, and confidence as well. There are only three muscles in the arm that contribute to deceleration of the arm after the baseball comes out of the pitcher’s hand. So obviously knowing how to transition all of the torque of making a pitch into letting your back and legs absorb the deceleration is crucial to good health and longevity. You see today’s pitchers “finish” with their back upright as they swing their right leg counterclockwise ala Paul Skenes. It’s what’s popular. We were taught to drive down through the pitch with the outside of the throwing arm to brush the outside of the landing leg with your back parallel to the ground. My way your back and legs can help absorb the shock of the pitch. Today’s way with the back upright the snap of the arm is totally absorbed by the shoulder. My point basically is work smarter not harder. Sully is as good as they come at the D-1 college level with respect to taking care of his pitchers. He gets this from staying on top of their workloads with the proper work ethic done between starts or outings.
I am good with catchers on a knee at times if it is an active one knee stance. It helps to conserve energy when catchers are squatting for a lot of innings and you can also block wild pitches very well from the proper one knee stance. Nowadays catchers are so damn tall it helps to keep them from having dead legs which will also hurt their hitting and baserunning.
I think it’s a factor of the number of baseball academies and therefore scouts that are present in the sport. Yes baseball relies on the farm system for the pros but the behavior trickles down to the lower levels. Scouts in baseball, just like any other sport, justify their recommendations based on “potential.” The NFL still believes you can take a 6’6 235 lb. athletic man of average intelligence and teach him to play QB. Scouts in baseball believe you can teach command/control/location to a guy who throws fire, as long as he can keep throwing fire. With regards to catchers, no clue why they do what they do. I blame the use of hockey goaltender masks by catchers which seemed to have started this downward trend of kneeling, glove turning, etc. Other than the NBA, you can’t ignore fundamentals in competitive sports. Moneyball seems to be a big controbutor to this. In baseball fundamentals are key. I only ever played 1B so I will defer the fundamentals of pitching and catching to others, but the only reason I was ever on a HS baseball team was because I was fundamentally sound. Not athletic, average hitter with average power, average arm strength. If not for working hard on fundamentals I never would have played past little league.
It is interesting that when you go to a HS or college baseball game, you easily spot the scouts seated around the home plate area with their radar gun. How come there is never a scout up high looking to see the curvature of a pitcher’s curve? Or a slider’s bight? Only focused on velocity. IMO they get tunnel vision and forget the rest. Are any of them observing the pitcher between innings?
I think that some catchers have a shorter pop time with a single knee stance. But the ability to stay in front of a wide pitch in the dirt is diminished. Somebody must have done a study to see where the trade-off is. If not it could be a good one.
I can not comment about your specifics as I enjoy the game (college especially) but do not study it (or played it) to your level. All I will say is what you are implying are primarily two things. The first, and I believe is your most salient point, is, "Why is the game being played so difficult? Keep it simple, stupid!" My pat reply would be "because it is shown that it works better than not at the college level." And now to a different point, but still in the discussion. Why do you, college baseball coaches, screw up a great game by putting your spin on your team rather than let the players play as they are designed by God? And my answer to that needs a football reference (that's what us Gator fans are wanting to do). You sign a damn athletic HS QB who runs with great skill and can throw it a mile if given the chance. And so you, and the fans, think you are on the way to prosperity. All you have to do is let his God-given talent to take over by giving him some help (effective running game, a receiver or two that can separate, a tight end who can block and make the "gotcha" catch, and a effective to good defense) and watch how good the team wins games. Your "complaint" would be, analogy speaking, "why do you let this obviously talented but raw QB do these things that don't win games in the NFL? Isn't making money in the NFL the goal of each and every player?" And my pat answer to that "question" would be, where did you get the idea that college coaches are designed to get their players into the majors? That may be the selling point to get them to sign up, but in the end, the #1 job (and likely #2 and #3) is to...win college games. Now if what you do to win one game or two is a bastardization of the true game which may have some long-term effect on your success (ie, you get to the tourney but you don't have the skill to win it all), then that has to be discerned. But still, if what you are tasked is to get the damn game won then do what you have to do to win the damn game. And so, if what is being "taught" is not what the baseball gods designed before, but it results in the ultimate goals, then it is what it is. Don't like the outcomes, then change the inputs, and that means penalize players/teams who play a different game than what was originally designed. Otherwise, this is the new reality. Does this make any sense?
I get that with a knee down that can relieve some stress on the legs but the only blocking I’ve seen has been is if the pitch is down in the dirt on the same side of the body as the knee is down. If the pitch comes in on the opposite side of the body of the knee that is down you can’t shift so you end up retrieving the ball from the backstop.
Amen. When I was a kid playing baseball, the mantra with two strikes was "protect the plate." I've wondered if that was just some local lingo or something practiced in the baseball world in general. Your "Defend with two strikes" makes me think it's a widespread concept, it just isn't practiced. I'll never understand just standing there and taking a third strike. Of course there was also the concept of "begging for a walk."
If the team is down to one substitute catcher and he is most comfortable on one knee then you roll the dice with what you have.
Best I ever saw at that was Nellie Fox. His career at bats per strike out was insanely high: 42.74. Best ever was Wee Willie Keeler (63.17) but I never saw him play. LOL.
What is the logic behind the upside down catchers mitt? Just noticed that this year. Seems like that would be distracting to the pitcher and much harder to actually catch the pitch and but I'm sure I'm missing something.
When they display on TV a pitcher's statistics, when did the number of hits become insignificant? (I'm thinking of televised softball, I haven't been watching baseball if it's different.) In the old days, with televised baseball, when "statics" were shown (as Dizzy Dean used to say), it was always IP (Inning pitched) first and Hits second, which is naturally a good indicator of how the good the pitcher is. (Hits mean everything to batters, surely they mean something to pitchers.) But I've noticed in watching softball on TV, hits allowed by pitchers are left out completely. It's strictly IP followed by walks and strikeouts. When did hits become unimportant?
If one looks at the career of 2 players as hitters, compare Yogi Berra to Johnny Bench. Look up the number of strikeouts they had as batters. Amazing Yogi did not go down striking out much, yet he was a free swinging batter....defended the plate! Yogi was very underappreciated as a player , as the Netflix on him, showed. He was built "round", body and face. Then the Yogi Bear cartoon coupled with his humorous comments lessened respect. Who would you want for 12 or so years as your catcher....Bench or Yogi. I'll take Yogi. I dont know enough about pitchers, but I do know that throwing under hand fast pitch soft ball was not taxing, except for any line drive hit back (I got hit in the chest that literally knocked me on my back, but I got the ball and threw him out at first, then died).
