The Rays Tank: Friedman Couldn't Find A Catcher, Feels Bullpen Is Strong

I ran across this a while ago, but it’s an older interview with Josh Paul. Paul had a strong defensive reputation, and I thought it may have been overblown,but stuff like this makes you appreciate the qualitative aspects of catching more:

DL: Can you give an example of how you’ve worked a specific hitter, and what you’ve communicated to your pitchers in wanting to do so?

JP: When I caught for the White Sox, I always had trouble with Edgar Martinez, as I’m sure a lot of people did. He was a hell of a hitter. He seemed to be looking for every pitch that I called, and he usually smoked it into the gap. One day I noticed something in the way he took a slider off the plate. He made an aggressive move with his stride toward it, but held his swing at the last moment. It dawned on me that he was looking for that slider. I called for a fastball on the next pitch, and he took it right down the middle without so much as flinching. He took the next one the same way. We got him to pop up the next fastball. He couldn’t take it with two strikes. From that point on I told the pitchers to throw him a ball on the first pitch. They thought I was crazy. They didn’t want to get behind in the count, especially to Edgar. But I persuaded them to sacrifice just that one pitch so we could see, by his stride, what he was looking for. Just like a pitcher can tip what pitch is coming by the way his body moves, so too can a hitter when he is sitting on a certain pitch. The next game I caught against the Mariners, Edgar was 0 for 5, and we continued to have more success with him after that. The reason this approach worked so well for Edgar is that he didn’t swing at a pitch he wasn’t looking for before two strikes. He took those two fastballs right down the middle because he was looking for the slider. His approach was geared for the off-speed pitch. He knew that a swing in that situation, at a fastball, even one that was over the heart of the plate, would not produce the result he was looking for. The fun part about catching is finding ways to get guys out, even if it means using their strengths against them.

DL: Can you give another example?

JP: We noticed that Cal Ripken tipped his approach as well. He was a hitter who used a lot of different stances in his career. Sometimes he would switch stances in the middle of an at-bat, and if you paid attention you could see what he was trying to do to you. Usually, if he was standing straight up he was trying to juice the ball—pull it for power. We would throw him soft stuff away when he stood like that. If he crouched down, he was trying to take you to right field, and he became vulnerable to fastballs inside. Of course, these weren’t automatic ways to get these guys out. Hell, they were Hall of Fame caliber players, but they were intelligent approaches that increased our chances of getting them out.