from Amazon
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
FEETf/x?
Cliff Lee, who is turning into this generation’s Greg Maddux says it, so we should at least listen:
“It’s huge to watch a hitter,” explained Lee. “You watch their feet in order to tell what they’re looking for, then you adjust accordingly.”
Their feet?
“Yup. As a catcher, you need to call for the opposite of whatever the hitter’s feet tell you they are trying to do. And Rob is great at that.”
According to Johnson, “the feet are the window to the brain.” He believes “the hitters’ feet will tell you what direction they want to go. It’s especially helpful with guys who are cheating to try and cover a part of the plate.”
Former big league catcher (and current Single-A Bakersfield manager) Bill Hasselman agrees.
“It’s important to watch the whole body, but especially the feet and hips,” he told me. “Good hitters will usually have their front foot come down in the same place. But you can tell what they’re trying to do. If the foot is open, the hips are usually open and it means they are out in front and you can get them with something soft and away. If they are stepping across a little, you can try to cross them up with something hard inside. You can feel it in your peripheral vision. Sometimes you can just sense it.”
Hmm… so batters should start faking out catchers then, with their feet movement. I wonder what a catcher would do if a hitter had his hips open, and thus he called for the soft and away pitch, and then after the pitcher accepted the sign and was checking the runner, the hitter then changed his footing to step across. What percentage of the time would the catcher call time and change the pitch call?
And if the catcher would frequently call time there and change the call… I wonder how effectively a batter could give a fake foot orientation and only change as the pitcher has just started the windup.
Baseball is going to be one heck of a complex game 50 years from now.