Date: May 12, 2019
Place: Evans Diamond, Berkeley.
Game: Stanford vs. California.
Situation: Bottom of the sixth, Stanford leading 3-0; Stanford’s Erik Miller pitching; Cal’s Quentin Selma at the plate, and Andrew Vaughn, the reigning Golden Spikes Award winner as the best amateur player in the country, on deck.
“Miller and Selma are battling, battling, battling,” Stanford pitching coach Thomas Eager said. “It goes to a 3-2 count. We called fastballs, fastballs, and I look over at Mav and say, ‘Whatever you want.’ All of a sudden, he calls for a breaking ball. Strike 3 looking! I’m like, ‘What?’ I thought he was going to keep calling heaters. Mav said, ‘I knew Miller was going to land it.’ That moment for me was pretty awesome, watching him do that … to call that pitch in that situation.”
HOW DO YOU know when to train a catcher to call his own pitches?
“They come to you,” Holzemer said.
Handley played on Holzemer’s teams from age 12 and was paying attention to the calls. He often asked his coach why he called certain pitches. Eventually, Handley asked if he could call them himself for an inning. The freedom grew from there.
“He wanted to learn,” Holzemer said. “He wanted to know as much as he could to try to get himself better. There were plenty of times where I trusted him. After a while, I knew he was fine.”
Handley is rare to some extent, because, “Clearly, he wants to be in charge,” Holzemer said. But it’s how he handles that responsibility that sets him apart.
“There are plenty of kids who want to call pitches, but it’s different to really want to understand why you’re calling pitches and make sure you’re calling the correct pitches,” Holzemer said. “Some kids don’t want to be the guy calling the pitches, because they don’t want to be the guy screwing up. Some kids don’t put a lot of thought into it. Mav wasn’t that way.”
Surrendering that responsibility to a catcher is rare in college. Most coaches won’t do it at all. Pitch calls come from the dugout, mostly from the pitching coach, sometimes from the head coach.
All eight teams at the 2017 College World Series, for instance, called pitches from the bench, as reported by the New York Times.
“For college coaches whose jobs are on the line, and that one pitch might determine the outcome of the game, I think we have every right to call the pitch so that nobody gets blamed but us,” said one coach of a prominent program to Pat Borzi of the Times. “You like to think your chances of succeeding are better with a professional coach who’s been in the game for years versus a young, 18-year-old kid who probably called the pitch that’s easiest to catch for him. It’s just part of the game of college baseball.”
That was the policy at Stanford under longtime coach Mark Marquess and pitching coach Rusty Filter when Handley broke into the starting lineup as a freshman.
When David Esquer, a minor-league teammate of Holzemer, was hired in June 2017 as Stanford’s Clarke and Elizabeth Nelson Director of Baseball and brought Thomas Eager from Cal as his pitching coach, that began to change.
In one of their first meetings, Eager made it clear: “I rely on the catchers a lot for their feedback.”
This was what Handley wanted to hear. Since then, he has thrived in an environment in which he can think, control, and determine outcomes in a way most of his peers in other programs can’t.
It’s a trust that’s earned, not given. It doesn’t come from one thing, but from a collection of evidence: game preparation, handling of pitchers, communication with teammates and staff, and performance.
“He wants to be great,” Eager said. “Very quickly, I realized how much he cared about winning and helping guys get better. With that, I put more responsibilities on his plate.”
While Eager signals in most pitches, here’s how Handley’s pitch-calling duties break down:
Handley calls pitches for Grech and about half for 6-foot-7 starter Will Matthiessen, because each has a delivery that makes it difficult to judge ball movement from the dugout. They are “feel” pitchers, Eager said, meaning Handley is a better judge of their effectiveness from his close perspective.
Eager often will give Handley two choices of pitches and let the catcher pick one. Sometimes, Eager will call the first pitch of an at-bat and let Handley call the rest. At any time, Handley can override Eager’s calls.
They talk after every inning. Eager tries to educate Handley on why calls were made or find out more about what Handley called. A lesson Handley is learning is that pitches aren’t simply meant to get a batter out. They sometimes have a greater purpose. For instance, Eager may call a pitch that he knows will be hit safely, usually early in a game, to set up a pitch at a more impactful moment later.
It’s all about understanding “the right pitch, the wrong pitch, and the safe pitch,” Eager said.
“Say the right pitch is a fastball in, because, if it’s there, the batter’s out,” Eager said. “The wrong pitch could be anything. Then there’s the safe pitch -- a fastball away, when the worst thing is a single to right. Think about the risk-reward … if he misses that fastball a little bit middle-in, he might hit it over the fence. Is that still the right pitch? The safe pitch, if he misses a little away, it’s a ball or a single.
“It’s picking your time. Young catchers always lean toward the right pitch, even if the risk-reward isn’t necessarily where you want it. The safe pitch sounds like the easy way out, but sometimes it’s how you win games.”
Handley also has to consider the human factor. He must know his pitchers so well that he can read whether the pitcher can execute that pitch at that time. It’s more than knowing if the pitcher’s stuff is working. It’s knowing if he’s relaxed enough to throw it, or too tired, or still thinking about a dropped fly ball.
Now, “You have two guys who are on the same page, a team,” Eager said. “The two of us are committed to one pitch 95 percent of the time. I think we have a pretty good success rate. You have two people with conviction on each pitch.”
