Earlier this week we got an interesting e-mail from a reader who read Taylor McQuillin’s blog about Calling Pitches and he wrote the following:

I read with great interest the recent blog from Taylor on pitch calling. Her words resonated well coming from an older more experienced pitcher from a fantastic organization.

However, I did find it surprising that some of the catchers do the pitch calling or, more importantly, that coaches actually let their catchers/pitchers assume this responsibility.

I would be very interested if you could tap into your resources of coaches etc. and get some input on how common this is. An editorial would be great from some of your trusted sources.

Being from the Mid-Atlantic, we play some pretty good softball but, I’ve never seen or heard of any coach allowing his kids to call the game for him. I’m the parent of a very competent pitcher and no coach of hers would ever allow her to call her own pitches, or her catcher. Just curious.

— John from Virginia

We reached out to several top club and high school coaches to get their insights on this topic—do you allow your pitchers and catchers to call pitches or even complete games?

Below are their responses…

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Until last year, I preferred my catchers to call the game for several reasons. I feel the catcher has a good sense of the game, helps speed up the flow of the game, catchers have an easier time seeing flaws in an opponent’s swing and, most importantly it makes it more difficult for opposing coaches to pick signs when you eliminate the coach calling pitches.

Last year, I had a terrific defensive catcher who was much better defensively when we took the game calling off of her plate. She was able to concentrate solely on the defensive elements without thinking about trying to set up a batter or what pitch to call next. After last year, I realize that the choice of who calls the game has more to do with my personnel than it does anything else.

— Bill Conroy (Beverly Bandits)

 

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As this relates to my Gold Coast team, I do not allow my catchers/pitchers to call the game in championship play. My reason is most players do not have enough experience when it comes to situations and evaluating a batter’s swing strengths or weaknesses.

Also, in critical times of the game I want to take on the responsibility of making a good call or the mistake alleviating some pressure off our players. Most of the colleges have their coaching staff call the pitches at the next level.

However, I do let my players get some experience doing this during pool/round robin games.

— Marty Cooper (Gold Coast Hurricanes; American Heritage, Plantation, Fla.)

 

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I have two opinions on this topic:

1. I prefer the coach call pitches when my pitchers and catchers are unfamiliar with each others’ strengths and we do not have a true scouting report of the team we are playing.

2. If my pitcher and catchers have strong chemistry and a strong understanding of each other and the team we are playing, I will put together a game plan and let them call the game.

That is the fun part of coaching players that have the softball IQ of the one we coach. Sometimes they can see things we don’t during the game.

— John Corn (Lady Lightning Team Miken)

 

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I have mixed emotions about the catcher calling pitches for several reasons. We teach our catchers to call the game and discuss in between innings what the hitters coming up in the next inning have done in past at bats with certain pitches.

So, for the most part, with and experienced or inexperienced pitcher I feel it is a good thing to let the catcher call the game. With inexperienced catchers, I like the pitcher to help call the game or the coach to help teach the catcher what to look for and what to call with certain situations.

The only time I like to have the coach call the game is in a tournament where your catcher could possibly be calling three and four games in a day. With her getting fatigued she will start to slip mentally and call wrong pitches in certain situations.

— Wayne Miller (Washington Ladyhawks)

 

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Before we started letting the pitchers and catchers call the games we had classroom settings that would educate them on the keys to calling a game.

This has been a discipline we have practiced for over eight years in our organization. We have found it to be very successful and feel the tempos of the games are better and the pitcher has a better rhythm.

Some of the things that are considered include:

1. batters: we have them look at the batter’s stance—did they stand closed, open, in the front of the box, in the back of the box, close to the plate, away from the plate, do they carry there hands low, do they carry there hands high, bat angle, is it flat, is it upright? We also have them take sneak peaks at the on-deck batter to see what the swing plane looks like.
2. location: what pitch location could we get ahead on and pitch to keep the batters off balance?
3. reaction: how did the batter react to certain pitches, locations, ball movement and velocity?
4. umpire: what is the umpire’s zone? After we identify that, we can really go to work and attack the zone.
5. count: what is the count and how do we work with it? We have a plan for each count… our goal is to win the 1-and-1 count.

We have had great success teaching this to our pitchers and catchers and our pitchers have benefited from this process tremendously. We make them accountable for each pitch. Their goal is to win each pitch and then do it again.

We have had great pitcher/catcher combos that has transcended into the college game over the past few years including Amy Buntin and Brittany O’Donnell (All-Americans at Notre Dame) and Lacey Waldrop (Florida State All-American) and Cassidy Whidden (Notre Dame).

— Kevin O’Donnell (Jersey Intensity)

 

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As far as catchers calling pitches I believe there is no right or wrong way of doing this. On our team, coaches call the pitches most of the time but it’s not because our catchers can’t – we chose to call for different reasons.

First most of our defensive plays – picks, pitchouts, etc. – go though us in the pitch calling, Also, we chart every batter and we feel we have a good idea how we want to pitch to the hitters.

The reason some people let catchers call pitches is they say the catcher has a better idea what the hitter is doing and what pitches are working better that day, which I could see but we are very much in tune with our pitchers and catchers during the game and we talk with them after every inning.

And last, but not least, we have what I believe are some of the most talented coaches in the sport and they do an incredible job of managing the game.

— Bruce Richardson (So Cal Athletics)

 

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We let our catchers make as many decisions as possible. Many of them have excelled at the collegiate level for this reason. It’s really just a personal preference of each coach and what their objectives are.

­­­— Tony Rico (Firecrackers)

 

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Wow, this is an interesting topic to me. As a former baseball catcher in college, I can see the argument from both sides. With that being said and no disrespect to catchers, I will always call our games in HS and in travel.

Sure, the idea of a catcher being able to call a game sounds great, but there is no possible way a catcher can have the depth of knowledge of the past pitch location/spin/speed/spray charts in front of the coaches’ eyes.

Am I willing to bet that my All American senior catcher, who has an outstanding ACT score, can remember that we outsmarted a hitter 12-36 months before on a change-up after a three straight screwballs? No way!  Catchers can help coaches look for small cues/tendencies to assist in getting hitters out, but its a marriage between the two  (pitch calling coach and catcher) that works the best in my opinion.

— Monte Sherrill (Alexander Central, Taylorsville, N.C.; Lady Lightning Team Miken)

 

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 Throughout the season we do different things all the time when it comes to this. I have two thoughts.

If I’m calling I can really work on the development of my pitchers and can see their progress and development on a game-by-game, pitch-by-pitch progression.

There are times where we do want the catchers to “own” the game so we occasionally let them call the game and work with the pitchers.

I feel it my responsibility to call the games and most of the time we do. I feel in order to develop pitchers it’s best that we coach and guide them along. It’s one of the times that we are more hands-on in every point of the process since, in all honesty, the pitchers’ development is not coached well in our business–maybe that’s why our pitchers have done so well in college.

They will always have the right to call off a pitch and always discuss what we are trying to do but when we are watching hitters we feel we have a better handle on things from our view of the game.

When we often are playing showcase game, though, we will let the pitchers and catchers work together to call their own game and just discuss what it is we are trying to accomplish in between innings. It’s good for the schools that are watching to see the catchers own their job some. But when it matters we call the game.

— Mike Stith (OC Batbusters)