What do pitcher/catcher/other talk about?

[Don]

In baseball you often see the catcher comes up to the pitcher to talk when he's struggling, and sometimes multiple guys show up to consult. I've always been curious what do these guys talk about. Since NBA started showing the timeout talks you can see that the coachs don't always have something meaningful to say. It seems to me you'd have even less to talk about here because while a coach in basketball can focus on some big picture stuff that players may have missed, if a pitcher is struggling it's more or less just him. Does the catcher tell him to try using another pitch? Throw more strikes?

Or is it just something they do to buy time for the guy to warm up in the bullpen?

[Eric]

Based on my extensive knowledge of Baseball, including watching all 3 Major League movies and a League of their Own. I can say the catcher is either bitching at the pitcher, or giving him words of encouragement and seeing if he can still pitch.

[Don]

One of the episodes of Onion Sports they interviewed a NASCAR coach on what he tells his drivers during a race and it's like: "Step on gas... step on gas... turn left... turn left... step on gas... step on gas!" and I can't really see baseball being too different from that.

[Julius Seeker]

"Can we just hurry this up and strike him out? Seriously... I really gotta pee."

[Flip]

I caught for my high school some games (mostly played 2nd base), i always went out there and shot the shit. Pitchers get too tense so i would tell him to relax and then crack a joke or make fun of the batter somehow. Mix in a 'keep it low, you got this' and youre good to go.

[Kupek]

I caught for my high school some games (mostly played 2nd base), i always went out there and shot the shit. Pitchers get too tense so i would tell him to relax and then crack a joke or make fun of the batter somehow. Mix in a 'keep it low, you got this' and youre good to go.

What I figured. If you think about it, pitchers have a stressful and lonely position - the play starts with them, every time, and all of the focus is on them. I imagine that the catcher coming out to have a few words is their only relief from that when they're in play.

[Don]

In the Major Leagues it seems like they pull the struggling guys pretty fast, so I always wonder if the catcher is just saying, "Look man we're going to pull you but we need more time for the next guy to warm up so we'll just pretend we're talking about something to buy some time!" In particular it looks like if the coach comes out to talk the pitcher almost always gets pulled, so I'm curious if the fact that the coach walks up there is just a ploy to buy time since the pitcher almost always gets pulled when that happens, so it's not like he's going to change his mind.

[Flip]

Most times, the pitching coach will go out there to talk if they simply want to settle the pitcher down or ask how he is feeling. Some pitchers are really honest and will admit if they are out of gas or are having a hard time with their control. If the manager goes out there, yes, it is usually because he wants to make a change. The managers/coaches are only allowed one trip to the mound per inning, if you do it a second time in the same inning you have to replace the pitcher.

Sometimes the first trip is to buy time for the reliever to warm up, yes. If its just the catcher who talks to the pitcher, though, thats not an official trip to the mound. The catcher wouldnt know if the pitcher was close to getting pulled unless they talked about it with the manager in the dugout the half-inning before.

[Zeus]

Well, there's a few things they talk about:

1) Signs - they could be changing up the signs, particularly when you have a player at second base. As many teams (in particular, my Blue Jays) are adept at stealing signs, this is actually a relatively more common occurrence than you might think. Often this happens without a mound visit (when the catcher does a rotation with his hands, usually means they're switching to a new set of signs)
2) Situation - this is where often see the infielders come in to discuss as well. They discuss the current situation, their plan, and the defensive positioning based on the situation/approach. A good example is if there's a runner on base. You discuss who covers second, whether you wanna pitch out and how often, or even if you wanna hold him on. A lot of that depends on the score, the batter, the expected pitch selection, etc.
3) Batter - often they're talking about the batter specifically and a discussion of their pre-game plan against that batter and how it currently applies. As baseball is a constant game of adjustments, they may be altering things up depending on how the previous at-bats have gone or what the pitcher's pitches are like that day (ie. slider ain't slidin' well, curve ain't bitin', fastball moving a little more than usual, etc). If you see a pitcher waive off the catcher two or three times in a row, they're clearly not thinking along the same lines and need to discuss
4) Pitcher - if a pitcher gets flustered or is getting out of his mechanics (often something they've been working on) or whatever, the catcher (and sometimes pitching coach) will go out there and talk about the pitcher himself and what he's doin' and what needs to be fixed. This is very common nowadays, particularly if you have a veteran catcher. They don't even go out to the mound every time to do this, could just be a quick point or other hand gesture, like the sign changing.
5) Delay - sure, there are situations where there's a delay tactic going on, but you really don't see that much in the majors anymore. And the umps are all OVER it, that's when you see them walking up to the mound pretty damned quickly instead of giving the catcher/pitching coach some time to talk

In a general sense, that pretty much covers it

[Flip]

Well, there's a few things they talk about:

1) Signs - they could be changing up the signs, particularly when you have a player at second base. As many teams (in particular, my Blue Jays) are adept at stealing signs, this is actually a relatively more common occurrence than you might think. Often this happens without a mound visit (when the catcher does a rotation with his hands, usually means they're switching to a new set of signs)
2) Situation - this is where often see the infielders come in to discuss as well. They discuss the current situation, their plan, and the defensive positioning based on the situation/approach. A good example is if there's a runner on base. You discuss who covers second, whether you wanna pitch out and how often, or even if you wanna hold him on. A lot of that depends on the score, the batter, the expected pitch selection, etc.
3) Batter - often they're talking about the batter specifically and a discussion of their pre-game plan against that batter and how it currently applies. As baseball is a constant game of adjustments, they may be altering things up depending on how the previous at-bats have gone or what the pitcher's pitches are like that day (ie. slider ain't slidin' well, curve ain't bitin', fastball moving a little more than usual, etc). If you see a pitcher waive off the catcher two or three times in a row, they're clearly not thinking along the same lines and need to discuss
4) Pitcher - if a pitcher gets flustered or is getting out of his mechanics (often something they've been working on) or whatever, the catcher (and sometimes pitching coach) will go out there and talk about the pitcher himself and what he's doin' and what needs to be fixed. This is very common nowadays, particularly if you have a veteran catcher. They don't even go out to the mound every time to do this, could just be a quick point or other hand gesture, like the sign changing.
5) Delay - sure, there are situations where there's a delay tactic going on, but you really don't see that much in the majors anymore. And the umps are all OVER it, that's when you see them walking up to the mound pretty damned quickly instead of giving the catcher/pitching coach some time to talk

In a general sense, that pretty much covers it

Meh, i didnt like to be so serious. Talking about situations and strategy can fuck his head up, he knows these things already. Pointing out the girl in the front row is hot, sometimes achieves the same results.

[Zeus]

Yeah, it can. But it really depends on the pitcher, situation, score, etc.

And I think Don was asking more of the serious side :-)

[Don]

Yesterday the Little League baseball was on and they actually showed what the pitching coach said during one of those on field consultation, and he basically said: "Just get them out somehow GOGOGOGOGO!" Obviously there could be serious stuff they can talk about but like I said when NBA start showing what coaches do time out you realize they don't actually say anything useful most of the time. Even if you assume that they will clearly never show you anything useful (since otherwise the other team can spy it with their own TV), the frequency of useless stuff showing up is very high especially during the earlier timeouts. I'm curious if they do something similar for baseball, maybe there's a lot more useless stuff than you'd think. After all baseball can't take as long as it does if they didn't figure out good ways to waste time.

Really it wouldn't surprise me if they show footage similar to this

[Eric]

I would also like to point out that we missed another opportunity at a bad gay joke with this thread's title.

Let's try to pay attention shall we.

[Shrinweck]

That was my first thought when I saw the thread but Don seemed so serious in his first post that I didn't have the heart to shit on the thread :P

[Zeus]

Don, MAJOR difference between Little League and the bigs

[Don]

Why would the difference in skill be relevent given that clearly no one here has first hand experience with Major Leagues? Yes the game obviously is played at a higher level at the Major Leagues so maybe you need more guidance but then you could easily say since the game is played at a higher level perhaps the pitcher already knows what's going on anyway. Of course these guys probably do talk about something in those visits but I wouldn't be surprised if it's just a placebo, similar to how you see the TV timeouts of NBA almost never say anything useful.

Now unlike TV timeout of NBA this probably won't work for major leagues since you only get commercials after a pitcher is pulled, and it's probably not too interesting to hear what they're talking about before they pulled the pitcher. You obviously can't do it live because otherwise you might actually reveal something useful to the other team, and I think as boring baseball is you probably don't want to miss what's going on just to hear what they said a minute ago. Speaking of which, I still don't understand why the NBA does that, where they'd interview some guy or show a replay and divert the camera away from the game that is still being played.

[Zeus]

How you treat a 12 year-old is different than how you treat a 25 year-old. That's where the difference lies

[SineSwiper]

Both the title and the conversation is sounding gaaaaaaaay... and a little creepy, too.