Buckeye 2015 posted:CaCO3Girl posted:Could you become a catcher, YES! Could you pick up the gear in 9th grade and be recruited to a high level college, no.
That's not true at all...... it's absolutely possible. The starting catcher on my son's D1 team, who is very good, never caught a game at any level until halfway thru his junior year in HS. Their starting catcher got hurt....he was a 2B/Pitcher and "took one for the team" as they say and moved to catcher. He's as good as all but a couple of the catchers we saw thru my son's first 3 years of college. Not big, not great power, but a great arm...and great mechanics behind the plate. A 9th grader has plenty of time to pick up catching.....it's up to him how far he can go with it. The "awful hitter" part is going to be as much (or more) of a factor in whether or not he can play beyond HS than his catching ability. Even the best catchers need to be able to hit a little bit
. Most HS catchers weren't catchers at the younger ages....nobody ever wanted to be a catcher. A lot of times when you get to HS and decide you want to play instead of sitting the bench as a backup OF or IF is when you turn to catching. His thought process is the same as ALOT of kids that end up being very good catchers.
That must have been a very rare kid. Blocking is not natural. Kids train for years and some still can’t. Receiving is also an art form unto itself.
My real question here is if the poster has the arm to be a catcher and isn’t hitting well, why isn’t he a PO?