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Reply to "Calling pitches from the dugout"

This might be a long post so skip it if you don't have the time.

A good coach does both.  He calls pitches to teach his catcher the way he thinks and his philosophy while at the same time, he makes sure that the catcher is evolving to a point where they will take over calling pitches.  

First, the system I used was to use the face and tell the catcher that my face was like his face when he faced the pitcher.  The location would be the same regardless of which side the hitter hit from. First touch was always location.  So, right cheek would be outside and left cheek would be inside.  Forehead would be up and in while chin would be low and away.  Both of them would be borderline out of zone.  Now, no matter what I touch, nothing matters until I touch the indicator which is the nose.  The first touch after the nose was the pitch.  Nose-right cheek is fastball.  Nose-chin is curve.  Nose-left cheek is slider or 3rd pitch if pitcher has an option and the pitcher catcher work that out.  Finally, nose-forehead is change up.  

This is pretty simple and so, anyone should be able to do it.  Naturally, I have not accounted for pitch outs and pick offs.  I did a lot of that verbally.  However, if I gave a series and ended it with touching my nose, I wanted a pick off.  

Even with this, you need deception.  If I tapped the top of my hat, the catcher is calling the next pitch regardless of what I signaled.  That would be the in place until I tapped the top of my head again.  So, if my opponent had a runner on 1st and they were "on to my system" and would signal a pick off is coming when I ended a series by touching my nose, I tapped the top of my hat and then gave the pick off signal.  I loved it when we had runners diving back in while the ball was being delivered to the plate.  

When the catcher was calling a game, he could tap his head for me to call a pitch in a key time in the game.  If the catcher looked at me when I was signalling and wanted to call the pitch because he saw something, he could tap the top of his head.  

Finally, a lot of coaches don't let their catchers call games because they don't practice having their catcher call games.  We rotated our pitching staff to the mound in just about every bp session.  They would finish their bull pen work by throwing to three or four hitters.  This is the perfect time to teach a catcher how to call a game.  Typically, we staggered the bull pen sessions so that our #2 would start about 5 minutes after our #1 and on and on.  When #1 ran to the field, #2 was finishing.  #2 to the field while #3 was finishing.  In that way, my catcher could do a lot of work learning how to call a game while at the same time learn a lot about the pitching staff. 

I hope this post hasn't been too long and that someone got something out of it.  

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