As a small school baseball coach, the first thing I did was determine if we had a catcher. Perhaps the big school coaches also have this thought, but it seems they would have more players from which to choose.
At Lutheran, we were very fortunate to have players who were catchers. It was always comforting to know that our starting catcher was going to return to the line up the next season! Catchers are involved in every play. Enough can not be said about the additional confidence a pitcher can have knowing he is pitching to a good catcher. Catchers have many responsibilities:
communicating with the coach about pitches
giving signals to pitchers
providing a great target for pitchers
blocking pitches that bounce in from of the plate
catching pitches that are off target
throwing would -be base stealers out
making tags at plays at the plate
catching foul balls that can be tricky
giving direction to infielders about certain plays and coverages
Here are our catchers:
KEITH WIXSON
2005
MICHAEL LONGWORTH
2006 - 2008
ZACH BEATON
2007 - 2008
TAYLOR GOFF
2009 - 2011
AJ GRATZ
2012 - 2013
AUSTIN KLASE
2014 - 2015
NOAH WOOD
2016 - 2019
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