Receiving Elbow

I think the elbow needs to stay outside the knee. I'd rather see his thumb at 12 o'clock and stick the pitch if it is outside of his chest area. Keeping his thumb at 5-6 o'clock with higher velocity will not allow him to stick it and his glove will be carried back toward the umpire.

One way to help correct this is to have them gently sway their weight toward the location of the pitch. Not only does this allow him to stay in proper position (with the elbow outside of his knee), but it gives the appearance that he is catching the ball in the center of his body which is a) stronger and b) more likely to get him the strike call. In this position, his thumb is around 3 o'clock.

Thanks redbird and we do work on the sway and he does it in games. What I teach is to try and catch everything with the thumb down in the 5 - 6 spot but once they feel tension in the elbow to work the steering wheel on inside pitches. So he should have his thumb at the 12 position once he gets outside the frame like you're saying. That tension really doesn't start happening until you reach the outside edge of the body and then you should put the thumb at 12. I tell my guys to catch the outside (I guess in this case the inside) half of the ball so they work their mitt around it to give it a better look.

The pitches I'm talking about where he does this is the ones that hit right at the left shoulder to slightly more inside. It's the pitch that he might put his thumb more at the 4 or 5 spot rather than the 5 - 6 or even 12.

He's got a future and it's something they will change once he moves to the next level. So I just want to go ahead and make the change. I've thought about having him have his knees closer together to force his elbow outside but I hate having that pressure on his knees from getting too much inside edge of the feet.

That sounds solid to me. The problem with starting in the 5-6 and rotating CCW when you receive is that some kids don't have the hand/forearm strength for that and will possibly get thumbed. A young kid catching upper 80's will have a tough time with this but swaying helps.

redbirdjr was taught to get the thumb to 12 on the inside pitch unless it is inside his sway. I like the cue of catching the outside of the ball.

It sounds like you are teaching solid stuff, you just have to break him of old/bad/ineffective habits.

Thanks and he does well but it just doesn't look right. Some of the scouts who come watch our stud like him and what he does behind the plate. We stuck him behind the plate last year because he's an athlete. Our catcher graduated and we weren't sure if there was anybody who could catch our stud. I started working with him and he was rough but about two weeks into the season he worked his way into the lineup and took the starting job from another kid. His pop time starting out was around a 2.7 and this year he's a consistent 2.2 - 2.3 on the bag and has hit 2.1 several times. This kid is just awesome and has really worked to be good. What he does is effective but this one thing just looks off to me.

Here is a different approach if you are not already using it......hinging the receiving elbow as the pitcher releases the ball.

From the starting mitt target which includes the elbow outside of the knee, the receiving elbow hinges bringing the mitt toward the chest. This allows you to move the mitt to the ball more freely especially if the pitch travels unexpectedly outside of the left or right shoulder.

It is more difficult to get to these unexpected outside pitches if the target is already set-up in front of the body with the elbow more fully extended (and the shoulder starting to extended) before the pitch arrives. You end up having to move to those pitches through a less flexible shoulder because it is partially extended already

In addition, this hinge motion and return of the mitt to catch the ball will also take away the tendency to roll the thumb upward on an inside pitch because the thumb moves toward 6 o'clock as you hinge. On return to the incoming ball there is less tendency for the thumb to creep to 1 o'clock.

At my level, my coach preaches the inside(glove side) frame by keeping the thumb at 12 oclock. If your lookign to go in with a fb, i feel it benefits both catcher and pitcher to have the catcher set up with a thumb up target on his glove side knee, this way he can limit the movement to that inside pitch and keep his thumb up frame, doing this should not hinder his ability to recieve anything inside that knee, just improve his ability to be firm and confident with that thumb up-glove side frame...hope this helps a bit.

2 min - Oct 22, 2008 - Uploaded by wy1dsta1yn
Joe Mercurio from the University of Maine Baseball teaches the basics of framing a pitch
www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gSy0aKfpmw

Starts with the setup. Relax your forearm on the top of your knee and simply let the ball come to you. If there is a great deal of distance from your thighs to your chest protector, then knees get in the way and force you to reach out. Icant figure out how to post a pic but I will email coach merchant both examples and maybe he knows how

quote:

Originally posted by coach2709:
I got a kid who's doing an amazing job behind the plate. He's a sophomore handling all our pitchers very well - even our stud who throws 90 some. He does a great job blocking, throwing, taking charge - everything.

My only complaint is that he lets his receiving elbow get inside his knee on inside pitches. Not sure if I can explain this very well so I hope you can picture what I'm trying to describe. When receiving an inside pitch he will have his thumb pointing up to the 1 o'clock position while the index is around the 10 o'clock position (hope that makes sense).

We do a lot of drills where we concentrate on trying to get that elbow out so the thumb is pointing down to around the 5 - 6 o'clock position. He just doesn't seem to get this aspect of catching. He's a great kid who works hard and tries to fix this but hasn't quite got it yet.

What do you guys think? What can I do or am I making to big of a deal of it?

Take a 5 gallon bucket and place it between his knees while he is squatting behind the plate. Backoff 20 to 30 feet and throw balls inside and middle of plate. If he doesn't do it right, the ball will hit bucket. Something easy to do and worked for my son.

A drill I use with my catchers is to catch a frisbee while they are in their catcher's squat. This is how they should be receiving the ball and I bet it will help him to get that elbow out from between his legs.

If his elbow is getting caught up on his knee ( pretty common) he has two options.

1. Lean forward with the upper body more (towards the plate) so the back is flatter. This should put his recieving elbow in a position where it will be in front of his knee and unobstructed.

2. Figure out a way to set up with his knees lower.

What he ends up doing depends on body type imo.

Thanks guys for all the replies - I actually forgot about this post which is why I haven't replied.

He's tall with long legs and skinny but surprisingly strong and flexible. He's been doing better this summer with it and only I did was tell him to stop doing it. Not sure why he all of a sudden started listening but glad he did.

I will say I love working with him. When I got him in Feb of last year he had never put the gear on. His pop time was around 2.8 and he had to catch a guy throwing low to mid 90's that just got drafted. He worked his rear end off and he's got his poptime down to 2.1 and is starting to get a lot of 2.0. I'm sure he will get this too.