Five signs your catcher was never actually taught to catch

Here's how most kids become catchers: the team needs one, the coach asks who wants to try it, and one brave kid puts his hand up. From that moment on he is The Catcher, and the total instruction he receives is roughly "get in front of it."

That's it. The most technical position on the field, learned by absorbing baseballs.

I catch it in players all the time — habits built over three or four seasons that nobody ever pointed out, because everyone was watching the pitcher. Here's what to look for.

1. The glove drifts on borderline pitches

Watch your catcher receive a pitch just off the corner. Does the glove get pulled back toward the middle of the plate after the ball hits it?

That yank is the single most common untaught habit in youth catching, and it's the most expensive. Umpires see movement and read "ball." Every borderline pitch your catcher pulls is a strike his pitcher earned and didn't get.

Good receiving is quiet — the glove beats the ball to the spot, gives slightly, and stops. It looks like nothing is happening. That's the point.

2. He blocks with his glove

A ball hits the dirt and the first thing that moves is his mitt, stabbing at it.

A properly taught catcher moves his chest to the ball, drops the mitt between his knees to seal the gap, and lets the ball hit his body. The glove is a plug, not a net. Blocking with the mitt means about half those balls squirt to the backstop and everyone advances.

This one's usually fixable in a session or two, because it's almost always a knowledge problem rather than a courage problem. Nobody told him.

3. He flinches — or he stopped flinching in the wrong way

Two versions of the same problem.

The first: he turns his head or closes his eyes on balls in the dirt. Natural, human, and correctable — usually by proving to him that his gear works, in a controlled progression.

The second is subtler and worse. Some catchers stop flinching by going stiff and just wearing the ball. They look tough. They're actually not blocking at all; they're absorbing. The ball caroms off in a random direction and the runner still advances.

Neither is a toughness issue. Both are technique issues.

4. His throw to second starts with his arm

Watch his feet on a steal. If his arm goes back before his feet have moved, his pop time is being lost in the exchange and no amount of arm strength will fix it.

Almost every young catcher who's "slow to second" has a hands-and-feet problem, not an arm problem. The transfer — glove to hand, into throwing position, while the feet get under him — is where the tenths live. It's trainable, it's dull to drill, and it works.

Parents often respond to a slow pop time by trying to build arm strength. That's the long way around a problem that lives somewhere else.

5. He has no idea what pitch is coming next, or why

Ask your catcher after a game why he called a changeup on 2-1. If the answer is "coach told me" or a shrug, he's a target, not a catcher.

The catcher is the only player on the field facing the whole game. Knowing the count, the hitter, the runners, and what his pitcher actually has working that day is the job — arguably more of the job than anything physical. It's also the part that carries furthest. A catcher who learns to think the game becomes the kid coaches want on the field even when his bat goes cold.

What this costs

Add it up over a season. A pitcher losing three or four strikes a game to poor receiving. Two or three extra bases a week on balls that should have been blocked. Runners going at will because the transfer is slow. A pitching staff nobody is managing.

None of it shows in a box score. All of it shows in the standings.

The good news

Every one of these is teachable, and catching responds to instruction faster than almost anything else in baseball. Receiving especially — a catcher who's never been shown how to give with the ball can look meaningfully different inside of a few sessions, because there's no bad habit to unlearn, just a blank space where the instruction should have been.

The kids who volunteer to catch are usually the ones willing to work. They just need someone to actually show them.

If your player is behind the plate and nobody has ever taught them the position, that's what I do. It's the position I played, and it's the one I most enjoy coaching.