Clubhouse Gas
Casey: Today on Clubhouse Gas we’re joined again buy friend of the show Brandon Smith, Brandon, thanks you so much for joining us.
Brandon: My pleasure.
Casey: You’re going to talk to us today about receiving, alright how to set up basic stances for younger players which is the basics of catching and we’re going to move forward we’re really proud to have Brennan here as an expert. He does a lot of teaching, a lot of teaching videos and he’s played all the way up to AAA, right.
Brandon: AAA.
Casey: Drafted by the Ace out of high school so that’s today right here on Clubhouse Gas
Brandon: Alright great let’s go ahead and get started. We’re going to talk about the receiving stance that we want to use at younger age and actually this is going to build into what players will use throughout their careers as catchers. First thing I want to talk about is the signal stance and you’ll see a lot of big leaguers get in their stance with their feet closer together. They’re on the balls of their feet. They’re just in a good relaxed position. They want to be in a position where the pitcher can look in and see the sign.
I may call a fastball and want to go outside, alright so this is our signal stance. Common errors here is when players get hunched over too far and they put their hand out in front. Well this is not very stealth for anybody because pretty much anybody in the park knows that this catcher is putting down fastball. So we want to make sure that we hide our sign form the opponent where we want to be in a position where the pitcher can see the signal. My glove is going to be off to the side where this third base coach is shielded and the signal is back here close to the cup.
Once we give the signal stance, the catcher needs to move in to his receiving stance and that’s probably the most important stance for young players. Let me show you what that looks like. As I move out to the outside corner I’m going to have my toes slightly angled out and what this does is it allows my body to be in a position to sway to the ball or to move side to side. It also gives a wide low target. Also at this point we want to make sure that the glove is slightly out in front.
Now when catchers get too far out in front they run the risk of getting hit by the bat on the back of their glove. When they get too close to their body, it makes it a little more difficult to see the ball as it’s coming in to the glove. But by being slightly out in front we’re in a safe place so that we don’t get hit by the bat and also we’re able to watch the ball into the glove so it was kind of a quick recap here, we want to be in a wide stance.
We want to have the toes slightly angled out and our tail, we want to sit down real low in our stance. It’s important to give the pitcher a wide low target. Now once we’ve gotten our receiving stance to catch the ball all we’ll going to do is get that big target out in front and we’re going to move to the ball just a little bit. One of the common mistakes you’ll see young catchers make is that they’ll work from their signal stance and just reach out at the ball.
Now by reaching out, or pushing out at the ball that causes this to be a little bit rough. A little bit harder pushing out rather than what we want to achieve, what we wanted our catchers to do in our receiving stance by being wide. We want to more absorb the ball so as this coming in I want to be soft in receiving this pitch not only does it make it easier for me to catch the ball but this instills good habits because you notice if I’m moving to the ball all the time on all the balls that I catch that’s only going to make it easier for that catcher to drop down and block the ball.
By staying in the middle here like a lot of young catchers do in reaching now when the ball’s in the dirt now they just try to reach for it rather than being in the good habit of moving out to the ball. So in review, we want to make sure that we go from our signal stance where we’re tight. We got our knees in. We’re on the balls of our feet, signals backing up against us in to our receiving stance which is wider. Our toes are pointed out and our tail is down. The gloves out in front and we’re in a position where we can sway to the ball and move to the ball in a free easy way to receive the ball.
Another thing that we want to make sure happens is catchers receive the ball is that they turn the glove the right way. On the ball that is to their outside, to this outside part of the plate to a right handed batter, alright. So we got the right handed batter just pitches out side. This catcher, he sways he’s just going to turn his thumb down in just a little bit. Thumb turns down so that we catch the ball.
Casey: Alright Brandon thank you so much, we really appreciate it. I hope that you come back and do some more stuff with us.
Brandon: Yeah my pleasure.
Casey: Until then we could check up your website its ebaseballtips.com some more great stuff we’re going to be working a lot with Brandon and he’s with us so thank you so much. That’s going to do it for us today and we’ll see you right back here next time for another great edition of Clubhouse Gas.
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