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Thrown down accuracy and pop times

DrillDrill10+ posts
Well my son is a catcher, and he is interested in improving his throw down to second / pop times.


So just for the heck of it I started recording pop times on some of the college and MLB games I have been watching.

The best pop time so far in a game situation was 1.9 seconds, I have a DVR and run it back just to get a few times just to see if I am correct. Surprisingly most of the pop time in the MLB and college are around 2sec to 2.2seconds.

The best pop time of 1.9 seconds was a perfect pitch and a perfect thrown the got the guy was out with a glove tag while the guy was sliding head first. I mean he was out by a mile/few feet.

Ok, my dilemma is you can work all you want to on arm strength, foot work but what I see as the most important thing in just the catchers responsibility when in comes to pop time is accuracy. You can have the best pop time but if you cannot throw down to second with accuracy you are doing nothing but fooling yourself when in comes to good pop time.

Am I missing something here when it comes to just Pop time to second? Is it really that important when I am timing the pros and college at around 2 seconds? Why is pop time such a big deal to some people?


Love always that #2 position,

drill
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DrillDrill10+ posts
quote:
Originally posted by CADad:
I've seen catchers who don't have great arms but do have very good pop times. The problem is because they don't have strong enough arms they can't make accurate throws.

Strong arms make it easier to make accurate throws as well as to come up with faster pop times.



I have seen weak arms with proper body position make one hop throws to second base and still get the guy out because of the accuracy of the one hop throw.


drill
Midlo DadMidlo Dad10,000+ posts
I would respectfully suggest that you need both arm strength and accuracy to succeed. If you are trying to make it with one and not the other, you may want to switch positions, because you won't make it behind the plate.

Same goes for if you aren't so good at receiving the ball, etc. You can have an accurate cannon, but if you muff the pitch, you aren't going to get anybody, and that's the bottom line -- do you or do you not stop the running game?
CC Catching Coach100+ posts
quote:
Originally posted by Catch43:
Thats very wierd. I read somewhere on this site that the difference from a crouch and regular should just be up to 5 mph...


Catch43,

You may be refering to an article I have written and posted on this forum where I discuss the difference between "crow-Hop" velocity and crouch velocity.

In that article I indicated that a good athlete should have no more then a 5% (percent) drop from their max velocity (usually crowhop) down to their crouch velocity.

If there is more then a 5% drop then there is something in their mechanics that is "eating" MPH and needs to be fixed.

The example given of the PG kid with 90+ outfield throwing velocity on only 77 from behind the plate reflects a 15% loss of velocity. If there are no unusual circumstances going on there and this is the normal difference in his throws, then that young man has some serious issues with his throwing mechanics to be loosing that much velocity.

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