catcher can not throw back to pitcher

i did for a short while. all your son has to do is develop a feel for his pitcher. some pitchers like to get the ball back quicker, some not so quick. perhaps he is just trying too hard to make a perfect throw to the pitcher. i do have a question though. does he stand up the throw the ball back? if not, he should start. if he already does, drill flicking the wrist. at our school, that is a warmup as im sure it is around the nation, but just a flick of the wrist...

It is alot worse when he stands up. If he throws while on his knees, he seems to do better. I will ask him about the drill flicking the wrist. Thanks

Try to get him to fire the ball back as quickly as possible whether squatting or standing. And keep telling him to stop thinkng about it and throw the darn thing.

I saw something similar to what you describe with a player on my son's high school team. Sometimes when throwing back to the pitcher he would launch the ball to center field for no reason at all. They determined it was not a physical problem but mental. He had no problems during warmup or in the bull pen but when game time came around, he developed this problem ---- sometimes. They tried everything but they never did correct the problem. He had to give up catching and became a firstbaseman where he had no throwing problems. I might add that he went on to play baseball at a junior college for a couple of years but he never caught again.
Fungo

I've seen this before as well. A local boy who was troubled with this a couple years back is now realizing success as a pitcher.

It's like the Yips, only its baseball. ...go figure.

My son had the same problem this past fall. Weird, we thought it was in his head. He had pitched a legion game (and he's NOT a pitcher). I really think it messed up his arm. Within the next few weeks he went to his junior college for fall ball and it was simply embarrassing. The same thing, he could throw to 2nd very well, but could not get the ball back to the pitcher cleanly. He also felt some tingling and numbness in his forearm. His coach told him to hang from a bar a couple of times a day. He felt the tingling diminish soon thereafter. One day while long tossing, he said he just threw the ball as hard and long as he could and suddenly he felt the numbness disapear and the problem was gone. I think it must have been a nerve related thing. It has never happened again and I think he learned a lesson about not pitching if you're a catcher.

Thats why its all mental. He believed it had something to do with pitching, believes he felt it during long toss, and he now believe's its gone, so now he can throw back to the mound without any problems.
Take it out of the mitt, fire it back quickly and stop worrying about it, or move to another spot.

99% of the game is mental the other 50% is physical

Sometimes a catcher has problems like myself with gripping the ball, on the throw to second everything is fine but on the throw back to the pitcher he holds the ball to tight, like myself sometimes.

Just another note of sympathy and encouragement here... our son had very similar problem. Out of the blue, the ball would sail. You just never knew when it would happen... but you knew it WOULD happen. Some of it was arm pain which he was struggling with, but I think a lot of it was mental.

Anyway, it just dawned on me at our last game how far he has come. I no longer sit on the sidelines worried about whether this is the time he will overthrow. He now fires the ball back to the pitcher about shoulder high and usually the pitcher barely has to move.

I think he broke out of his mental trap by throwing hard back at the pitcher and making it a goal not to have the pitcher move his glove. He didn't like it at the time, but at one point the head coach made him fire successive rounds back to him without the coach having to move the glove. He couldn't stop until he hit X number in a row.

I'd be concerned with the "can't feel his arm" thing. Is he saying that as a mental thing? Or can he PHYSICALLY not feel his arm? If it's physical, a visit to an orthopaedist or even a neurologist might be in order. Did anyone suffer along with me back in the day when RedSox pitcher Matt Young couldn't throw a pickoff throw to first? He's a lefty, looking right at the first baseman and could not make that throw. They ran on him all year. It was all mental.