As a catcher, I personally love the art of calling a good game. This has been a skill that I have fine-tuned through many practices and games. Knowing what pitch to call in what situation can lead to an important out, or a game changing hit. Most hitters are looking for “their pitch” early in the count when there are one or no strikes against him. For
the typical athlete this pitch is a fastball somewhere over the middle of the plate. It is critical that the pitcher and catcher are able to keep the offense off-balance and uncertain about what pitch is coming. Therefore, as a catcher, this “hitter’s pitch” is exactly what you wish to avoid. This is a good time to call a first pitch off-speed, such as a change-up or a curve ball. Ok great now there is one strike on the batter, and already his approach to his at bat has been thrown off. Because you have just thrown an off-speed pitch for a strike, he will most likely expect it again. Now is when you should change speeds and location on him with a fastball, inside. If the hitter is now expecting an off-speed pitch, he will not be able to react in time to make solid contact with a fastball, resulting in an easy ground out. This is the essence of good game calling: unsettling hitters at the plate so that they can’t expect what pitch is coming.
Mike Piazza broke his bat on this by MelvinSchlubman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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