Most teams around Major League Baseball do important things in a similar way. However, the Miami Marlins don’t, and it caught the attention of players on the New York Yankees for a few different reasons.
Instead of the Marlins catcher calling pitches, Miami’s coaching staff does so in the dugout, according to Chris Kirschner of The Athletic. Miami is one of two teams doing this, showing how weird it might be.
“One of a catcher’s most important jobs is to control the pitching staff each game. But two MLB teams, the Marlins and Colorado Rockies, are taking that responsibility away from catchers. They believe their coaches will do a better job of understanding what pitches should be thrown because they have information readily available that includes strengths and weaknesses of their pitchers and the opposing hitters,” he wrote.
Agustin Ramirez, the Marlins catcher, could be losing value. At least that’s what Yankees starter Carlos Rodon thinks.
“Do I think it’s good?” he asked. “No, I think it’s terrible.
“When Agustín Ramírez wants to be a free agent, and he’s had every pitch called for him, who the hell is going to look at him and be like, yeah, he’s a catcher? It’s just taking away opportunities to learn.”
A huge part of being a catcher is managing the game, understanding hitters, and making decisions in real time. When those decisions are taken away, it’s fair to assume that teams around the league won’t love to hear that when free agency comes around.
Austin Wells shared the same thought as Rodon. Wells understands this first hand after doing so for a few years now with the Yankees.
“Calling pitches (from the dugout) is completely different than from behind the plate and reading swings and being in the box,” Wells said. “If you’re just relying on whatever the dugout is trying to call, you’re going to lose out on a lot of valuable time and feedback on whether you call the right or wrong pitch. If you call the wrong pitch and you thought one thing and it ended up being bad, you’re gonna learn from that.
“With whatever the coaches are calling, you’re not learning and growing with the game, especially when you face guys in your division over and over again. You have an idea of what each guy does well or doesn’t do well — and you’re able to grow from being in there. Watching film and looking at the numbers only gets you so far.”
Coaches calling pitches is high school stuff. Even elite high school batteries typically call games. Not to say that it can’t work, but there’s a lot more than just it being a thing and going on from there.