Do you like this or hate it? The Marlins coaches calling pitches. #mlb #baseball

And a big story in Major League Baseball tonight. A lot of eyes will be on this ball game at Arlington. The Marlins coaching staff calling the pitches. Alone Lman calling the pitches from that Marlins dugout tonight. There’s Alone. He flashes a couple of signs on into his catcher Liam Hicks. He takes a look at the card, hits the pitch compad and away we go. Is this smart or micromanaging? Yesterday the Marlins coaches were calling pitches instead of the pitchers or catchers. They figured they wanted to let the catchers focus on catching the game and they had a deeper understanding of the analytics behind all of these pitches. So, why not call them directly? Obviously, if you’re a veteran pitcher or a veteran catcher, this is going to drive you crazy, but what do y’all think? Is this the future of baseball or is this an example of treating major leaguers like little leaguers? We’re going to call the pitches from the dugout tonight. And this is um conversations we’ve had internally and our staff. We just we kept coming back to uh do we think our pitchers over time will uh perform better if that’s the delivery system we use coming from the dugout. And uh I felt like that this was the right time to do

36 comments

  19. Overanalysis has made baseball less beautiful. The Dodgers manager manages by analytics, doesn’t let his stars be stars, and it’s destroyed morale and will probably cost them a meaningful shot at the title this year. He’s lost more games than any player on his staff, and he does this because when you play to analytics, you play to average. Average is your ceiling. The league will figure out the folly of this in a few years.

  23. From a pure results-oriented perspective this seems sound. There's a reason why the QB doesn't call plays through an entire drive in the NFL either, he just relays the playcall to the team. Granted that involves a lot more people but inherently it's not like anyone's agency is really suffering.

    That said, from a player management perspective this is probably bound to at least turn some heads in a negative way if not outright turn the clubhouse against you. When something has been done a certain way for a long enough time then people just don't want to have to do it another way. They like their comfort. Better results be damned.

  24. Hell at what point do you just give the pitchcom to the coach? I don't like pitchcom and I don't like coaches calling the pitches. But that's just me.

  27. I'm not so sure what the issue is. Before Pitch Com, you could see a catcher look over after every pitch and get the pitch call from the manager or a coach. This probably eliminates any potential confusion and gives the catcher one less arbitrary thing to worry about.

  30. Obviously a different level but when I was coaching college ball this is what I did. Not sure I’ve ever seen it done in the big leagues.

  32. I feel like this isn’t the worst in theory, but it does give the pitcher so much pressure not to shake off as many pitches, especially if their coach has an ego. After all, a coach who keeps getting shaken off could possibly just pull the pitcher prematurely for no other reason. The battery should still have some level of autonomy.

  34. I am a marlins fan. The people decrying this system of pitch calling are not familiar. In the minor leagues we’ve been doing this all year and we have the highest combined win total out of all 4 teams in years. We also have some of the best pitching prospects in the sport, every single catcher in our farm system with over 200 ABs has an OPS+ of over 100, and the transition has been completely seamless. If you’re in your feelings then oh well.

  35. I remember I was in high school and my coach was calling the pitches and he was telling me to throw a change up, but I didn’t have a change up.. so now what I throw a pitch I don’t have and it gets smacked and it’s my fault smh. They don’t how I feel that day so how u gonna tell me wat to throw

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