Youth catchers are notoriously too far back from batters.
Coming up next, how to help catchers understand where they should set up.
Youth baseball coaches can get frustrated trying to get their catchers to move up closer
to the batter.
But they also don’t want their catchers getting injured, so what is the best way to
help catchers be in the right place?
Where is that sweet spot?
The #1 reason catchers are too deep is due to fear of getting hurt.
They may fear getting hit by the swing or the backswing or getting hit by foul balls.
That last one, getting hit by a foul ball is actually more likely to occur when the
catcher is further from the batter as the ball has more opportunity to hit the catcher
in an unprotected area of his body.
Also, the further back the catcher is the more time that catcher has to react instinctively
and turn his body exposing unprotected areas.
Most young catchers have not developed the muscle memory needed to resist dodging a fast
moving hard baseball.
One more common reason catchers are too far back is that they simply set up in the two
divots created by past catchers.
Prior to games, if the field has divots where the catcher’s feet have dug in, you should
attempt to fill those in.
Catchers should set up differently for different hitters.
If a hitter is far back in the box, the catcher needs to stay back as not to get hit by the
bat.
If the hitter moves far up in the box, then the catcher needs to follow him up so he’s
not too deep.
For catchers that are afraid of getting hit by the bat, we need to provide them with safety
guidelines so they can know that they are safe from the bat.
A catcher who is thinking about getting hurt is not going to become a good catcher, so
they do need guidance on the safest setup.
The general rule of thumb for setting up as a catcher is that you want to be able to reach
out and touch the imaginary line that extends from the batters back foot.
In this still shot we see that the catcher is too far back.
He could not come close to touching that line with his glove.
Contrast him to this catcher who is clearly too close.
If this catcher reaches out as far as he can he will extend past that line by a good amount
and we do see him getting hit by the bat on a inside pitch.
For young catchers, or new catchers, I give them that guideline and if they are still
nervus I’ll tell to find that spot and then back off just a few inches.
I’d rather they be slightly too deep and comfortable than in the correct spot and nervus.
Nervus catchers do not catch pitches.
When you instruct your catchers, I suggest using a stick or bat and place that at the
batters back foot right in front of the catcher just as I did here with the red line.
Ask them to reach out and see how close they are to touching the bat.
They should be able to either just touch it or almost touch it while in their normal stance.
If they are able to get past that line have them back off.
While it’s unlikely he’d get hit by the bat, the right hitter and the right pitch
will hit the glove.
Not only do we risk injury, we now have a catcher that might be afraid.
As long as your catcher is behind that line he should be safe.
As you see here, even with this hitter who is not taking a stride and is late to an inside
fastball, his bat does not appear to go behind his back foot at the height of the baseball,
the area where the catcher’s glove would be located.
Here is a good example of why you need to keep youth catchers back.
This hitter, Goldschmitdt, is a no-stride hitter.
The catcher should have known this, but he makes a couple of costly mistakes.
You see here that because a no-stride hitter is late to a high inside fastball, his bat
is late and makes contact deep.
I looked very hard to find any video footage of a hitter’s swing breaking that plane
and this May 2014 video is the closest I came to finding that.
It also helps that our angle here is almost straight on.
At contact, however, the catcher’s glove is in front of that back foot when he gets
hit.
This is the worst video of a catcher interference I could find.
The bat hit his wrist first and he was certain he fractured a pinkie.
X-rays revealed he did not.
I am sure a catcher broke a bone at some point in the history of the MLB on a catcher interference
like this, but I have not found that footage or that story.
Which tells me that it’s extremely rare.
This video is meant for coaches of young catchers as well as catchers just getting started.
More advanced and experienced catchers will vary their set up based on more in depth criteria.