I'm having trouble getting my glove to balls and catching them properly when the pitcher is throwing really fast like 85+, what are some drills where I can improve my speed and snag those fastballs

Jump rope,make sure you have strong forearms

Oh and lots and lots of bullpens.Ask for the best pitchers.

B~Pain, Welcome to the High School Baseball Web. Focus on being relaxed. Tense muscles work against themselves and cannot respond as quickly as relaxed muscles. Also be careful not to “jab” forward at the ball as this increased the distance the glove has to travel to catch a pitch. I think the best thing for you to do is to practice good mechanics (stance and glove movement) that will allow your body and your mitt to respond quickly to the baseball. I think the Rob McDonald “Catching Skills and Drills” video is a great video to learn the catching position. Hope this helps.
Fungo
Rob McDonald Video

Try having someone "pitch" to you from less than 60' (doesn't even have to be a pitcher). How much closer than 60' depends on how hard they can throw and what sort of reaction time you're trying to simulate. Have done this with my son over the years to practice receiving and framing "faster" pitches. Seems to have helped.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Fungo:
B~Pain, I think the best thing for you to do is to practice good mechanics (stance and glove movement) that will allow your body and your mitt to respond quickly to the baseball.QUOTE]

BPain,

Fungo is all over this one. I agree completely that proper receiving is all about stance and glove movement. I also believe that Fungo listed them in order of importance. If a catchers stance is not solid, balanced, and low he will never be able to do the best job possible.

If you had any pictures of yourself in your stance that you could post that would be of great help.

Also, if you can explain what the problem is you have with the 85+ pitches that would help us zero in on some help for you.

to Catching Coach: basically I have trouble picking up the ball if the pitcher misses his target making me end up not placing the glove in the proper position, like the ball hitting my glove in the palm. It's just im not able to pick up the ball basically.

BPain,

Do you have any pictures of you in your stance with your glove ready to recive a pitch?. Would love to see where your glove starts from as the pitcher begins his windup.

Also tell me a bit about your stance with no runners on.
Are you on the balls of your feet?

Do your heels touch the ground at all??

What direction are your feet pointed?

and lastly refering to your glove, as through your eyes, where is your thumb pointed when the pitcher releases the ball? Best way to respond to thins one is 3 0-clock, 5 o-clock or whatever is appropriate for you.

85+ is very fast,so dont sweat it.

The first time I caught someone in the mid 80s(this year,my freshman year)I didnt know what to do,but I always made sure to catch them in the bullpens so I could get used to the speed and angle and break of the pitches

Keep working at it

Catching Coach: No pictures at the moment sorry but basically my stance goes as is: toes pointed directly towards pitcher, on teh balls of my feet, once the pitcher is about to release the pocket and my thumb are pointed as close as i can to 12 o'clock, I've been told you want to have your thump up because you can adjust easier to pitches that might have missed and what not as opposed to the 3 o'clock position of the thumb. This is all with no runners on, the only thing I change with runners on is basically im in a more athletic position with my butt higher and my knees closer to a 90 degree angle.

Thanks for your guys advice

BPain,

I suggest that your stance may be causing part of your problem with receiving. When a catcher sets up on the balls of his feet with his toes pointing towards the pitcher he has only one direction he can move, forward. He has no ability to move his midline left or right of center without leaning. This will have 2 negative effects.
(1) it will look to the umpire behind him that most pitches on the corners of the plate are out of his reach and will be made to look like balls.

(2) Since you have no ability to shift your midline left or right to keep the glove closer to your midline when you catch it you run the risk of having gthe higher MPH pitches pull your glove/arm off the plate. Again making good close strikes look like balls.

Take a look at the photo album linked below. Look at the first pic titled "Jay Receiving-Cropped 3" It is Pic #1 in the Summer Camp Album

Notice the feet in complete contact with ground. Toes pointed up the baselines. His glove hand set with thumb at 3 o-clock, fingers to the sky. This stance gives him tghe ability to shift his weight, and midline, and glove, left or right and keep the glove near his middle.

He is NOT sitting on his heels. He is in a powerfull athletic position.

The thumb starting at 3 o-clock is much more of a neutral position and will allow you to get the glove to pitches at all parts of the plate. Setting up a 1 o-clock I have found has you too committed to pitches to the glove side and will tend to make you late to pitches down the middle or to the backhand. Which I think is one of the issues you are trying to reslove.

Take a look at the pic and let me know what you think.

Receiving No-Man on

I could be wrong but you sound like a young catcher. My advice is as follows. I hope I can put it down to make it understandable. Work on developing a good wide stance and then start using your hip flexors to carry more of the load, instead of the knees. Feet facing forward towards the pitcher. You can have your right foot slightly back if it's more comfortable. If you have trouble determining where your hip flexors are or how to tell if your using them, do a search for them in Google. This will help you catch longer with a stronger base and shift better from side to side keeping the pitchs off the black in front of your body, getting more strikes. Thumb down. A catcher should be more of a receiver. Pretend your catching a water ballon or better yet an egg. As you receive the ball, soften up your glove hand and bring it "slightly" in to your body. These movements should be slight and smooth. Practice catching a tennis ball without a glove. Hope this helps you a little. This is just one persons opinion. Sorry if it's not real clear. Good Luck to you, study and practice.

Everything sounds good but I dont understand your logic behind the glove positions. Lets say you keep your glove in the 3 oclock it would take 180 degrees to catch the low inside pitch but if you start in the 1 oclock or 12 oclock its a 90 degree rotaiton to either side.

With glove position, watch Johnny Estrada, Brian McCann, Mike Matheny, Jarrod Saltalamacchia or Javy Lopez.

BPain, this is tough without pictures.

Help me understand how you have been catching the low inside. Just before the ball hits your glove, What o-clock is your thumb pointed at, and what direction is your palm facing.?

quote:

BPain, this is tough without pictures.

Help me understand how you have been catching the low inside. Just before the ball hits your glove, What o-clock is your thumb pointed at, and what direction is your palm facing.?

for the low inside i turn my glove to the left and catch it at about 9 oclock or 8 olock I gues my palm is towards th epitcher?

I think you are making this harder then it is.Clock positions seems a bit complicated

Just get in there(one thing I like to do is wear wristtape to enforce strong wrists)and catch!

Getting back to Fungo's comment, When my son is having trouble holding onto the ball and/or catching the outside pitch 80% of the time the problem is he is attempting to "Box" (Jabing) at the ball. Let the pitch come to you, don't fully extend your arm forward as you will end up throwing/boxing/jabbing your glove at the ball instead of receiving it.

Its difficult to come up with a solution without watching you catch for an inning or two to figure out what your problem really is. Good luck.

All of the above advice is excellent, and the kind of thing we should see more of here -- shedding more light and less heat. (Why is it that we can discuss fielding rationally, but not so much with pitching, and hitting gets ridiculous?)

BUT, one thing I noticed is that B~pain mentioned having difficulty picking up the ball. This may be less a matter of mechanics than of vision.

I could not hope to add to the discussion of catching techniques that are already laid out for you. But one thing I would ask is, when was the last time you had your eyes checked?

Also, do you wear glasses or contacts? If you wear glasses, glare off the lenses, or loss of focus on balls outside the lens area (peripheral vision) may be affecting your depth perception. If you need vision correction, contacts are the way to go. Also, we find that baseball tasks are much easier if you correct to 20/15 instead of 20/20. Picking up the ball's rotation and movement are much easier, both for catchers and hitters, with better vision.

There are also drills you can do to improve your dynamic acuity.

After that the difficulty you experience with picking up the ball is likely a function of simply not getting enough practice with harder throwers, because there aren't enough of them immediately available to you to practice with. What I would suggest is that if you have a local training academy, you contact the coaches there to volunteer to serve as a catcher for them when they work with high velocity pitchers. The academy where my son gets his bullpen work has a handful of guys who always come in and help us at no charge because they are basically getting free help with their own games. Perhaps you should become one of those guys yourself.

thanks a lot midlo dad I think you hit the spot, I do have my eyes corrected 2.25 on the left and 2.75 on the right which at my school nurse vision exam thing I was told im corrected to 40/20, do you think this could be giving me a problem? I'm going to hte doctor in a few weeks for routine maybe i should mention it to him, if its not too late. aNd i will take your advice on trying to get as much work as i can with hard throwers.