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Originally Posted by BuggBob
If the ball goes through the strike zone it is a strike, I don't care if it is a good or bad the catch. You can't tell catchers to move up, left, right or back --that is coaching, we're umpires not coaches. If the catcher is blocking my view of the plate, the strike zone just got smaller, I may tell him if he asks.
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Of course I'm not going to instruct varsity HS or higher players concerning anything. I am talking about inexperienced catchers who obviously have no clue about the position.
I'll tell the catcher to move up if I so choose. I'm not coaching, I'm controlling the situation. If I want to be closer to the plate, the catcher is going to have to move up and catch where he is supposed to. I'm not going to call balls and strikes from 10 feet behind the plate. And I don't plan on being there all day trying to get strikes out of the pitchers, or being a human backstop for lazy catchers.
The closer and better target presented by the catcher, the easier it is for the pitcher to focus on and hit that target. If the coach hasn't taught his catchers properly, I intend to help them out, and I have. Many of these catchers have thanked me, and told me that their coach would have never noticed these things.
The catcher's main #1 job is to keep the ball off of me (with the exception of fouls, of course). Anything else he does is secondary as far as I'm concerned. I'm not out there to take a bunch of untouched fastballs off my thighs, hands, wrists, forearms and elbows. This is usually not a problem at the varsity level, but at the youth ball level the catching is usually atrocious.