SEATTLE — It happens occasionally that Seattle Mariners manager Lloyd McClendon, like all his peers, expresses irritation over the pitch-selection decisions from his pitcher/catcher combination.
So, why not just call pitches from the bench? That routinely happens in college and high school. Mariners catcher Mike Zunino wore an NFL-style wrist band in college. Many college catchers do.
“It was for calling pitches,” Zunino said. “They had pickoff plays, pitchouts, the running game. It sort of had everything.”
Why not have something similar in the big leagues? The Mariners reached Thursday’s open date in their schedule at 3-6 in large part because their staff has a fat 5.16 ERA. Could that be trimmed, even a little, from the bench?
“It doesn’t work because you’re not in tune with the pitcher,” McClendon said. “The catcher and pitcher have a relationship. They have a feel and a touch for the moment. The worst thing I can do is to call pitches constantly for my catcher. … He loses his sense of worth, his sense of an ability to run a game, to get a pitcher in a groove the way he wants him. It’s just not good.”
It must be more than that, though. Even the NFL’s top quarterbacks, after all, get plays sent in from the sideline — with no apparent loss of self-worth. Although, yes, they also often change those plays at the line of scrimmage.
Zunino sees a similarity in that sense.
“There is a lot of stuff we can go over in a scouting report,” he said, “but hitters make adjustments, too. A guy comes up for his first at-bat, and he can be going totally against the script. There’s definitely a feel to it.
“There are little things that you pick up on. Are they diving? Or leaning. A lot of that translates into the next pitch as well.”
McClendon began his playing career as a catcher and recalls the learning process at such outposts as Kingsport, Tennessee, and Little Falls, New York.
“After my games,” he said, “I would sit down in the office with the manager and go over the game, the mistakes I made. We would talk about the mistakes I made. And you learn.”
Third-base coach Rich Donnelly, also a former catcher, points to those subtleties within the game as the primary argument against calling pitches from the bench at the big-league level.
“A good catcher can read the hitter,” Donnelly said. “He can see if a guy is leaning. A manager can’t see that. A catcher knows his feet, can watch his eyes.”
Donnelly said most called third strikes on fastballs are the result of the catcher reading the batter in a way that can’t be done from the bench.
“You can almost tell when he’s looking for a breaking ball because he’s leaning out over the plate. Then you bust him in. That’s why you see a lot of guys go like this — (throws arms up and jumps back) — on strike three.”
McClendon added: “You can’t, just can’t, know that feeling from the bench. My plate calling is strictly late in the game to help develop my catcher for the future.”
As example:
“I reminded Mike earlier in the week that a guy is a first-pitch charger,” McClendon said. “Don’t throw him a fastball.”
Mostly, though, that duty falls to Zunino or backup Jesus Sucre.
“Part of my job title is to call games,” Zunino said. “That’s a catcher’s responsibility. Sometimes, there’s a certain situation where they think a certain pitch is the right one, and they’ll relay that to me.
“But for the most part, it’s my responsibility.”
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