What's up? Baseball players, coaches and parents.
I'm Coach Dan Blewett In today's video, we're going to go over catcher's signs
what to give, how to give them pick off plays, holds, pitch outs,
all the different one, two, three, four combinations,
four fastball, slider, cutter, changeup, curveball, all that stuff.
So in today's video, we're going to go over the basics of catcher signs.
All right.
So let's jump right into it.
Number one, this is important,
and a lot of young players make this mistake is you can't be giving signs.
Way down here because players at first base, second
place their base, they're going to pick up these signs, going be read them.
They're going to read them from different angles.
Aside from your legs.
So whenever you are giving signs as a catcher,
you've really got to tuck your fist up by your cup
and you have to wear a cup of your catcher if you don't.
Be sure to get on that.
Make sure you tuck it up into your crotch so that when you give these signs,
they're going to be concealed by your thighs.
Okay.
So that's a basic thing that has to be done.
A lot of youth pitchers miss this by giving signs too far below their crotch.
And another quick tip for for hiding your signs is just keeping your glove
kind of like hanging around your knee.
You'll see catchers do this.
It just almost creates like a curtain.
We're now the third base coach.
Definitely can't see the signs that I'm giving.
Okay, so let's go into the basic.
We'll do the numbers first and then we'll do some of the like
the pick off plays, pitch out, stuff like that second.
And obviously you can jump through the the time stamps of the chapters,
which you'll see in the scrubber or in the description of this video below.
All right. So let's talk about fastball first.
This is the number one sign.
We'll cover location for all signs at the end.
And fastball is going to be the one
that you're going to call location for the most.
But a fastball is just a straight one.
You going to go in? You can go here.
If you want to go out or just this side, you go here
so you can easily indicate with using the pinkie or the index finger
with the index finger is down to the side or the pinky is to this side.
So fastball is really, really easy.
Now we need to distinguish between four seamers and two seamers.
And here's the thing they're just one pitch.
So you don't need a one for four for four seamer and two for two seamer.
For example. That's not that's not a thing that you do.
Fastball is fastball cutter is a different pitch that we'll talk about later.
But for four seamers or two seamers slash sinkers, they just fall under one.
And this is where the catcher's communication matters.
The catcher just needs to talk with his pitcher.
Hey, what kind of fastball do you throw?
I throw a really heavy running two seamer.
Okay, so the catcher's just going to know when he puts down one.
It's going to have a little bit of run to it.
It's just communication.
Now, in the rare instance where a pitcher does
have a really good two seamer a sinker that has a lot of movement,
and they also throw a four seamer
that they use purposefully, like maybe they throw that to the glove side
or they elevate the four seamer only, which is something you should do
exclusively anyway.
Then the catcher might say, Hey, this is fastball,
and then if I wiggle it, that means I want a sinker.
Or if I wiggle that fastball finger, I want the two seamer.
So that's one way to differentiate it.
But again, most of the time with a two seamer
just having a little bit of arm side run or a little bit of sync,
the catcher doesn't need a different sign.
He just needs to know how which which speed of pitches coming in.
All right.
The number two, this is for Curveball.
This should always be Curveball.
It is the universal sign for Curveball.
So when the catcher sign is two, that is a curveball.
Don't miss a sign.
These don't make this a slider for a pitcher
that throws only a fastball and a slider two is always reserved for Curveball
because catchers they're going to give these signs universally.
So even if a pitcher throws a fastball on a slider only he's not going to go one
and two, he's going to go one and three because three is the slider sign.
So two is four curveball.
Again, there's not a whole lot of variation for this one.
This one is not complicated.
We'll talk about location at the end, but two is curveball.
All right. Sign number three is slider.
So when the catcher puts down the sign for three, that is slider or it's a cutter.
If the pitcher does not throw a slider.
Now, if a pitcher throws
a slider and a cutter, which does happen at the really high levels of baseball,
which is not going to apply to you watching this video in most most cases,
then we might do a different sign.
Maybe it's it's it's four is the is the cutter
or it's a one with a wiggle is the cutter and three remains the slider.
But three is the universal sign for slider.
And you'll see that I'm using these three fingers, the fingers
because they're easier to differentiate from the two.
So two can easily become three.
But that's going to get it's going to get mistaken.
Sometimes the catcher doesn't like this.
I've got three up, but this one is kind of in the shadows.
You don't want miscommunication.
So once you go to two, you want to go to okay for the three
and it's easier for them to say do this or to talk over here with their hand
if they're going location.
So when you go to slider sign, this is always going to be three.
You want to do the OC as a catcher.
All right, catcher sign number four is not really technically four.
It is, but we really call it wiggle.
So when I pitched, I threw a fastball, curveball, changeup and a cutter.
So but most of the time I would just throw fastball, curveball, changeup.
So be like one, two, wiggle.
You know, we go and have our catcher meeting and bigger.
So fastball curveball, changeup.
I want to wiggle okay so the wiggle the four fingers
just because again,
this is the same reason that you want to do the OC fingers for your slider versus
the middle fingers for your slider for three
just because it starts to get confusing.
You see a lot of fingers and when they're flashed around a lot,
it can be tough to figure out what it was at three.
Or was that four? Was that two or was that three?
So they wiggle the four for the change up.
So one fastball, two, curveball,
three, slider, wiggle, changeup,
that's pretty much the universal signs for all these different pitches.
Now, in the case that a pitcher threw a fifth pitch, it's probably a cutter
or it's probably a sinker where it's so good
that it needs to be differentiated, like we said.
So that's probably going to mean if you have a fifth pitch, it's
the wiggle fastball, but you could do hook em horns.
So five would be hook them horns.
You're probably not going to do this just because, again, fingers get lost.
So it probably would be like five would be hook them horns,
but some teams uses four pick off plays, which we'll cover in a second.
All right. So let's cover location for every pitch.
So with fastball, this is very, very easy because the straight finger
means over the plate.
Over here means this side, pinky means this side.
So middle, this side, this side.
Okay.
Now, if you're going to give a up location, which would only be applied
to a four seamer, wouldn't apply to a two seamer.
You know, we go here and he would just do this.
Something that here, up here, up
very, very simple, easy to understand as a pitcher.
Now, that's the one location that really needs to be differentiate.
So it's like oh two
and the catcher puts down this, you're like you're thinking, okay,
I don't want to throw a fastball down the middle or two.
So the catcher is going to go here
and then he's going to say, I want a fastball and I want it up.
All right. So that's the easy way to do location.
So these general rules here are going to apply to every pitch.
So if you want slider over here, you go three and you go like that.
You want two over here, you might.
Or if it's like, hey,
we really need a Barry this curveball, he go two and maybe like
do some kind of signal down.
But most of the time we don't need to be signaling
stuff like that if it's oh two or one, two.
And he goes, Curveball, we should know that this needs to be buried
in the ground.
Okay, so with all that stuff, communication
should happen before the bat.
So this is the catcher meeting in the dugout
and just on your team, understanding, hey, this is what this means when we say
slider on 202 count, it's always going to be on the corner
or it's always going to be a balance, right? Something like that.
So you don't need too much communication when you're already communicating
well as a team between coaches and players in between pitchers and catchers.
So again, location, real simple.
Move the fingers around, wiggle here, wiggle here, do all that stuff,
fastball up.
But again, good communication before the bat goes a long way.
All right.
So let's talk about some of the alternate signs
that you can use that are not called for pitches.
So pick offs, the first base or second base,
pick off plays or pitch outs.
So the first one, very easy is the fist.
This signifies a pitch out.
And if you don't know what a pitch out
is, I'll do another video that covers when and why you do pitch outs in more depth.
But a pitch out just means that
the pitcher is going to intentionally throw a ball into the other batter's box.
The catcher is going to throw it down
the second or third and have a much greater chance of getting the runner out.
You're guessing that we think the runner is going to go on this pitch,
so we're going to call a pitch out so that we have that high fastball.
The catcher has a great chance to get that runner.
So, again, this is a play that you put on.
So if a catcher says
we need to try to throw this runner out,
we're putting on a pick out or a pitch out.
You give the fist, the pitcher is going to say yes.
The next one is pick over.
So if the catcher sees that this runner has a huge
lead of first base or a huge lead at second base,
and the pitcher is not really paying attention.
And of course, right handed pitchers can't really see down to first base very well.
The catcher will just do this or he'll like thumb over to first base.
But this is the universal sign for pick over,
pick over the first base or pick over to whatever base.
So he might do this, but really he's probably just going to like
do this flicking thing with this thumb.
That's the sign for pick over to the base.
And then the last one, if you want to put on a pickoff play,
if you're a coach and from the dugout you want to call a specific pickoff play,
then what you're going to do is we'll probably use
one of the things you can do is use the hook them horns as your starter.
So you'd say if the catcher gives, hook them horns.
This is signifying to the pitcher and probably the shortstop needs to look on.
So say there's a runner on second base.
The coaches say, hey, guys, when there's a runner on second shortstop,
make sure you're looking into the catcher
so you can see if he gives a pickoff play.
If that's the way your team does it, then that's something that needs
to be communicated to your middle infielders,
whether it's the shortstop or the second baseman or both.
But hey, guys, make sure you're looking at the signs
so you can see if a pick off plate is getting put on.
Okay, so hook them.
Horn says we have a pickoff play that's on.
And now since we have three different pickoff play as a team,
I've said hook them horns. There's a pickoff play.
We're doing play number two hook, hook them horns.
We're doing play number one, hook em horns we're doing play number,
play number three, whatever it is.
So that's a good way to communicate a pickoff play.
If as a coach, you want to put those plays on from the dugout.
All right. So that's an easy thing to do.
You could do.
You know, there's other different ways to do this.
But if you want to communicate from the dugout, hook them
horns is a good sort of set of signs that you can set aside to do that.
All right.
The one thing I didn't cover in today's video is signs with the runner
on second base, you're going to have to do a series of signs
to conceal, which is the true sign from the base runner.
Right. He doesn't want to be at a picket.
You want him to be to pick it up and relay it to the to the hitter.
I'm going to cover this completely in a separate video that I will link to
in the description below.
If this video is the first one I release and know whenever that one's done
just checking the description, you'll find that link.
But that is a really important thing.
So make sure you understand that you don't just give one sign.
If there's a runner on second base, you need to give a series
of signs to conceal, which is the true sign.
So you hide your signs that way, but we'll cover that another video.
So hopefully today's video about catcher signs in baseball was helpful.
There's a lot to know.
I know it does become pretty simple over time.
And as I mentioned, good communication between catchers
and pitchers and coaches is what makes all this very easy.
Because when a catcher knows what a pitcher throws, where he likes
to locate different pitches, how they break,
you know,
all the different nuances
of a pitcher's repertoire, it makes the sign stuff a lot simpler
because you become on the same page, right?
So if he says, Hey, fastball over here, I know that means
maybe on the outer half for a pitcher with not very good command
or I know that means on the outer corner for a pitcher with excellent command.
Right? Or if a pitcher only throws a two seamer.
I know that when I say fastball up, he needs to know
to switch to a four seamer because you don't really want
to throw two seamers and sinkers up in the zone, stuff like that.
So good communication
is always an important part of baseball, especially when signs are given.
All right. Thanks for watching.
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