coaches calling pitches...

any opinions

 

To me it depends on the coach and the player. In HS, if the coach has a strong background in the pitching area, such as he was a 4 year college catcher or pitcher, then I don't think it's bad. Unfortunately some HS coaches want to micro manage the game and call every pitch and every steal and so forth. This tends to take the initative away from the player and they won't do anything without the coach calling it.

If the player has demonstrated good feel for the game, the coach should let him call or at least be able to shake the call off because he is hte one who has the feel if a certain pitch is working for him that game.

 

Watauga used to have a former college catcher ( Ben Wellborn) calling pitches and he was excellent. At some point last year they let the catcher call them.
If a catcher is not afraid of looking bad on a curveball in the dirt with baserunners on, then it's not a bad idea to let the catcher try calling the game. If not, I'd go with the coach.
If your catcher has pitched at some point, I think that is an advantage in calling a game. Pitchers are more likely to shake off their catcher than a coach which is a good thing.

 

as said in the previous posts i believe it depends on the skill level and overall baseball knowledge of your pitchers and catchers.

last year i called pitches b/c i had a sophomore catcher and 3 underclassmen pitchers. they didnt understand setting up batters and atbats. towards the end of the year when we started thinking on the same page, i laid off a bit with the calling from the dugout. you really want your players to understand the game, and situations.

however, this year at a new school, i have a senior catcher, 3 senior and 2 junior pitchers who have played together for a long time. these kids work great together and for the most part they are usually on the thought process as me in the dugout. on a rare occasion i may give a suggestion to my catcher.

in the end, the pitcher will usually throw what he is comfortable with at that point depending on what's working for him prior to that pitch.

when we do disagree, i'll simply pull them aside and explain what and why i might have done it differently. this communication really allows player and coach to understand each other and the game itself.

 

If that is the back ground of the coach. Mine splits it sometime. I will sometimes depend on the batter and the situation. The coach may know this likes the high, inside over outside. I do however have a problem with the curve ball coach or let's throw the whole game. Sometimes they will throw to many and now you have a kid with a arm not worth having and no future. We know these and have seen it far to many times.

 

Let them learn.

Our catchers call the game. If we feel that we have to have a certain pitch at a particular time then we will call it. It hasnt happened in awhile. The game needs a flow to it. A pitcher needs a rhythem. Catch the ball get it back to him and go to work. The defense needs to play not stand waiting for a signal from the bench to the catcher then to the pitcher etc etc. The only way to learn to call pitches is to call pitches. Who is better suited to see what the catcher can see? I do agree with an inexperienced catcher you might have to bring him along and call some pitches or all the pitches for awhile untill you have confidence in him. This is just my opinion. There are coaches out there that are outstanding at calling pitches. Maybe we let our catcher do it because we want someone else to blame if it goes bad. lol

 

All of you have made great points. Some pitchers prefer a coach to call them (allows them to concentrate on the pitch), some have outstanding catchers who have a feel for the game, but even those coaches that call pitches allow their pitchers to call it off.

It's a learning experience and one I like the pitchers and catchers to be involved, but I was surprised that even on the college level, the pitching coach calls the pitches. I guess they want to have some control of their career.

 

heck

Heck , in girls HS softball, I've seen daddies calling the pitches..........in the dugout, through the screen, etc.

 

Our coaches call the pitches. Our head coach pitched at VT and played in the Cubs system to Double A and our assistant coach pitched in college as well.

We chart every pitch of every game, so they know exactly what to throw in each situation. It's worked great so far.

 

i pitched 4 years in high school plus summer ball,4 years in college at 3 different colleges not to mention the summer college leagues in mich and va i played in plus 2 years of minor league baseball and to my knowledge i never had a pitch called for me other than pitchouts.chino cadaia the braves bench coach was a minor league teammate and we'd talk pitch calling quite often. he as a catcher thought that it was more gut feel than anything else that as a hitter he could figure patterns and thought setting up pitches was not the best way to go. as a juco coach and coach at a d1 school i was never on a coaching staff that called pitches either.in a conversation with a scout the other day he said his organization hated coaches calling pitches for kids because kids become robots and do not learn how to pitch. my own experience is that coaches today control the pitcher too much and make him into a robot. pitchers don't learn to control the tempo of the game, they don't learn the psychological warfare that pitching is. one example of that is how many times do you see a pitcher ask the ump to rub up the ball during the inning? this is a trick to not only catch a breath but to break up the rythem of the offense and more than anything puts the pitcher firmly in control, remember nothing can happen until the pitcher throws the ball. how many coaches know how the pitcher is throwing? often times they don't even see him warm up yet they call pitches for him. if a pitcher and catcher have any clue at all they can usually do better than the coaches can.imo