This is the PowerPoint presentation that I gave on January 8, 2011 at the ABCA national coaches convention. It covers what it takes for catchers to play at a high level. Good info for catching coaches, parents, and catchers.
I gave this PowerPoint presentation on January 29, 2011 at the first annual BaseballCON convention in Louisville, KY. It contains information on what I believe is the foundation of catching: Stances, Receiving, Blocking, and Throwing to 2B.
After getting a lot of questions about workouts/nutrition/supplements, I decided to add a page to Catching-101 to try to answer all of those questions. Here, I have posted the Atlanta Braves off-season workout from 2006 (my last year in the minor leagues). It has a lot of great information about workouts and nutrition. There is a section that tells guys how to gain, or lose, weight depending on your goals. Even though it is a few years old, it has some very valuable information that I think will benefit all catchers who are trying to become better athletes. This is the exact copy that I was given by the Braves!
This is my workout book from 2003 (my Junior year at Ole Miss). I thought that some of you might find this interesting and like to know what a college workout looks like. In the second half of the book (during season) there are many workouts that are not filled out. They were NOT skipped! Some days we took off as a team, and others were done on the road when we were playing out of town. Also, this was a special year to me because I hit the 300 mark on bench press for the first time!
It’s a great idea for everyone to be very well educated on the rules of baseball, and what better way to do that than by reading the rule book! Here you can download the NCAA Baseball Rule Book for free so that you can read it, or use it as a reference.
This is the manual that has all of the rules that NCAA DI coaches must follow. The most interesting section is Chapter 13 which is about recruiting. If you have any questions about telephone calls, emails, official/unofficial visits, etc. this is where you will be able to find the answers!
I was asked to speak at Pitch-A-Palooza in December 2013 by Lantz Wheeler who runs the website Baseball ThinkTank. This is was one of the premier pitching events in the country and there were a ton of great speakers teaching other coaches about pitching. I was asked to speak on Building a Relationship with Your Catcher. You may be surprised at what you find!
Coaches, many people are now signaling the pitches to the catcher through a number sequence because it is near impossible for opposing teams to steal the signs. The catcher will have a legend on his wristband and can decipher a 3-digit code that the pitching coach gives him. What I have provided should be used as an example. Many coaches who use this system have multiple wristbands so that opposing teams cannot write down the hand signals from the coach and keep a log of their signals. I recommend using the software that I developed called Never Miss A Sign to create these wristbands.
Coaches, this is a performance summary that should be filled out after every game or scrimmage. Keeping track of all of these things is important to help you evaluate a catcher’s performance and give the catcher accurate feedback about their performance. I also developed the Catcher’s Performance Summary iPhone app.
This is an actual practice schedule from the University of Louisville. The most important thing about a practice schedule is that it is extremely organized and players and coaches know exactly what they should be doing at all times. It doesn’t matter if you use Microsoft Excel or use a typewriter, just make sure that you’re taking advantage of all the time that you have!