I begin this post with a disclaimer. I run a program for catchers. I sleep, drink and eat catching. I look at baseball through the eyes of the catcher. I try to come up with ways that leagues can better help the development of their leagues catchers. And I make no apologies. I discovered a number of years ago one of the reasons that it is often hard to get enough kids to want to catch. At the Minors level, why would a kid want to be responsible for 20 runs scoring? Since the pitchers are still learning to hit the glove, and he is struggling to figure out how to catch the ball in the dirt, it is not uncommon for there to be 20 runs scored solely on passed balls. Why would a kid want to get behind the plate when he knows he’s going to “Let” 20 runs score.
Few kids get the opportunity to learn to tag on a fly ball when on third and score from there because the first pitch that goes in the dirt and gets by the catcher he scores. Actually in many games, every kids that gets on scores. And you call this baseball????
A few years ago the youth program in our town we made the change that in the Minors there would be no scoring from 3rd on a passed ball. NO Scoring at all!!!! By the 2nd week of the season we were having games 2-1, 3-2, like real baseball, not 21-17. It took the pressure off the pitcher and catcher to relax and have fun and not be so overly concerned about runs scoring.
The next season we made some other observations. Our infielders never had the chance to make force plays. As soon a player got on first they player would “steal” 2nd, then “steal 3rd” and any chance for a force was usually lost. So we implemented the following rule change. No runner can move, even on a pass ball, until there are 2 strikes on the batter. Now there were many opportunities to make the force at 2nd or 3rd. And we even saw a few double plays that first year. We did have some coaches complain about the reduction in running. But then they have a very unrealistic view of base running at the youth level anyway. Here’s there idea of what happens when a runner gets on first.
Pitch crosses plate, runner goes,…sorta…catcher fakes throw, runner goes back to 1st….sorta….runner dances the jig off of first to bait catcher to throw,…catcher runs out from behind the plate very badly faking a throw…..runner goes back to 1st…sorta….catcher tosses ball to pitcher, runner must go back to first..,…yeah that was baseball. read more
