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Do you have the toughness if necessary to play behind the plate? Well, I will tell you what, when you start blocking pitchers you are going to find out in a hurry if you have that degree of toughness. When we work through blocking pitches, we first want to show what options are available to us.
The thing you need to keep in mind as the options are shown and you get comfortable doing one and the other that you make sure that you work at him virtually on a daily basis and if you do not, then you are not going to be able to block a pitch. You are going to take pitches away from your pitcher. You are going to give up you are going to allow base runners to advance when they have no business advancing. You are going to stick your nose in there and get the job done.
You might notice got a couple of bats laid out; knees are just used to these props. Whenever we talked about blocking a pitch, we always want to make sure that when that pitches hits us it comes back towards the middle of the diamond or back toward the plate. So rather than having our legs parallel to each of the back rinds on the batters box, we want our legs to be parallel to either one of these bats depending on which side the ball comes on. If the ball goes straight down the middle we will drop down the middle.
Let us take a look at blocking technique. From the normal receiving position, we are going to block the pitch right in front of us. What we do is just kick your feet out from underneath you and we drop down. Now, you will notice he got his main hand protected behind the gloves, his shoulders are rounded, the ball is going to hit the chest and drop forward. He got his chin tucked to his chest, so the ball cannot come up and get you. He is in pretty good position there, alright. JD back up. Let us drop and do the same one again. Drop, there.
The key in blocking pitches, make sure do not catch the ball. We are not interested in catching the ball. The instinct you are try to catch the ball, up comes your glove ball goes right between your legs. Block the pitch, cover the hole with your hands like JD has it right here. Block the whole here and cover the main hand, round the shoulders, tuck the chin, we are in great shape he has done his job. Okay, back up.
Now, we are going to block the pitch to your left. We are going to try to get ourselves parallel to the baseball bat on this side of the diamond and on this side of the batters box. Ready? Drop, okay. Alright, back up. Let us walk through that technique.
First option, we are going to kick take the foot and slide it out, this way and we are going to move to meet it with the rest of the body, here. As we move to meet it we will put our body in position, it is parallel to the bat. So, when the ball hits the chest, it hits, and comes back to the middle of the field. If JD goes parallel to the batter’s box slide it around in the wrong way, goes parallel here, the ball hits and slides away and then we end up with the runner advancing.
Let us try it to the right. On this one we kick the right foot out, slides, move to meet the ball. Ball hits the chest and drops back to the middle of the field. Notice how he has got himself set parallel to this bat and that allows the ball to come back at the center of the field.
Option two requires quick feet. This maybe more a long lines for high school player. JD is very advanced catcher for a high school player. College players and your season pro players do this too. This is almost a jump, one direction or the other. Both feet move at the same time and it is a jump out.
Now, on the second option, the ball is on the dirt, we o exactly the same way as the first option. Kick the feet out straight down, right there, back up. Here is the second option of the ball right and ball left. Let us go ball left to begin with. Ready, go. Notice how he just kick both feet out and slid. He is in exact position he was in on the first option. Now, that he is in to the second one, yet he did it a little bit quicker. Let us go to the left again, ready, go. See how he just hopped over with both feet. Back up. You got to have catchers got some pretty good quick and say you are wasting your time. Okay we are going to the right, ready, go. Back up, one more time, ready, very nice, good technique.
He got himself protected and he has got the ball heading back to the direction of the plate we wanted. If we can get that far, then if we can overcome the fear of the ball, once we get one moving into the catchers, well we are in pretty good shape.
I wanted to talk briefly of how we handle the breaking ball. JD as you might be able to see, does a good job moving right and left and blocking pitchers in front. However, he does not try to catch the ball, he tries to block it. But the breaking ball is just a little bit different. JD wants to go ahead and gets set up first.
Many people are on the mistaken impression that when a pitcher throws a breaking ball, one or two things happen. On a breaking ball that hits the dirt, if it is a right hand that is throwing it, and it breaks and hits the ground, some people have the impression that the ball just keeps running outward this way, or the second impression that the runners when the ball hits, it tails back this way.
Actually, with the breaking ball when it hits the ground, it pretty much go straight back. So, what JD or any other catcher for that matter has to do with raking pitch is determined where that ball is going to hit the ground and try to get right behind it. So, if the breaking ball were to hit here, he is going to put his body right behind it because at that point it is going to shoot almost straight backwards and then he is in position to be able to block. So, he has to have a little bit of imagination o the breaking ball, get behind where that balls at and again, run through your same good solid technique in terms of blocking a pitch.
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