DREAM Team Baseball

As a catcher, you have a lot of responsibilities. Not only do you have to be able to hit, but you also have to field your position well and have a solid arm to throw out runners. The most critical responsibility of a catcher is to manage the pitching staff. A big part of that is knowing when to call for specific pitches and being able to receive them properly. That's where your stance comes in. The way you position yourself can have a significant impact on the way you receive pitches and the way you manage the pitching staff. This article and this accompanying YouTube video will introduce you to primary and secondary stances and explain why they're essential for catchers. We'll also give tips on finding your proper posture and how to perfect it.

Grayson Waters is a Senior Pitcher at Lake Ridge High School in Mansfield and he has been an intern at DREAM Team Baseball this school year. In this blogpost, Grayson has conducted an online interview with Lake Ridge High Baseball Moms about their memories and mottos to live by when parenting and supporting the journey of their own baseball player (from youth baseball all the way to a prestigious high school baseball program)! We hope that this blog benefits parents of youth baseball players as it provides great perspective from parents that have been there!

Every player has a pregame routine they believe in. Not only that, but as a family you develop your favorite parts of baseball. That could be traveling, a restaurant at a tournament field or a favorite team to play against. All of these things make up your family's baseball experience. Below are some questions and answers posed to Lake Ridge HS Baseball Moms about various aspects of their player's journey:

Baseball player development doesn't just happen when a player takes the field. What if I said that player development happens even inside the team dugout? Meet Baseball's 10th Man; a position that some parents that have a youth baseball player may not properly value. Let's talk about what makes dugout development an important aspect of baseball learning and player development.

Youth Pitchers often experiment with pitch grips by what they see on YouTube, TV, or just what "looks cool." Despite their best intentions, youth pitchers that play around with their pitch grips can significantly hurt their chances of throwing strikes or possibly their arms by not utilizing the correct grips and delivery.

These are the five most common pitch grips that youth pitchers (with pitch grips 4-5 below being more for advanced, mature pitchers) should master (both from how they throw the pitch to the spin direction of the pitch when it's released per diagram below) before taking the mound.

1. Find a Baseball Winter Offseason program to join! These programs are normally 6 weeks on average in total, but typically are packed with great ways for pitchers to...

Crucial to the art of shutting down hitters is the ability to locate pitches in the zone and make balls look like strikes (and vice versa). At the advanced level of baseball, control is more than just throwing strikes. Control means being able to pitch to a scouting report and locate pitches. Pitch location is the most important. No matter how a pitcher feels any certain day, location will win more times than not in the battle against the hitter. Most of the time, a pitcher will not be able to improve velocity or “life” during a game, but he can always fix the location on his pitches with a good mental approach and sound mechanics. As former big leaguer Mike Sweeney said, “God blessed each pitcher with a certain amount of ability to throw a ball." Locating pitches however is the most effective means of getting hitters out.