January 11

January 11 Update

January 7-10, 2021 was the 77th annual American Baseball Coaches’ Association Convention. This convention was supposed to be in Washington, D.C., but due to the COVID-19 pandemic, ABCA had to make the difficult decision to overhaul their annual meet-up into an online-only event. The next several blog posts will be thoughts from my experience at ABCA 2021, highlighting many of the important discussions that took place and their relevance to SPMBA and the growth of baseball in our community.

To start, I have to extol the virtues of ABCA and the benefits to the greater baseball community. Originally started as the governing body of collegiate baseball, ABCA has morphed into the massive institution that it is today, encompassing thousands of coaches across the United States, Canada, and several other countries (I have seen baseball representatives from Great Britain, Sweden, Finland, Russia, Czechia, Philippines, and more). ABCA now serves as a larger networking body for youth baseball, high school baseball, travel baseball, collegiate baseball, international baseball, professional baseball, and the private baseball industry and its affiliates. It is a home for all coaches, regardless of background, to have a chance to learn and grow alongside the leaders of our sport.

Our annual membership dues are $75 USD, roughly $100 Canadian dollars. It is an invaluable investment into a coach’s personal and professional development as the ABCA provides an extensive coaching resource library of podcasts, drills, charts, diagrams, and videos to members. This catalogue is updated regularly by ABCA’s staff of former and current high level coaches (most employees in the head office are former collegiate or professional coaches). They also provide access to previous convention videos! In years past, videos were only available to convention attendees, but (coinciding with the pandemic and necessary virtual learning environments) they have digitized their archive and opened it to all registered members. This means coaches have access to convention videos (main stage, youth sessions, and expo theater) dating back to 2008. Further, if your area of work requires professional development credits or CEUs, they can provide documentation to support your attendance. It’s an incredible steal of a deal and I can’t implore enough coaches to sign up for this tremendous organization.

Now, to ABCA 2021. Wednesday’s sessions were truncated as the event started in the evening. The event always opens with the previous NCAA Division I national champions, but due to the pandemic the College World Series did not occur and no national champion was crowned. Instead, they had a joint presentation focusing on the values of the United States Army and how those can help prepare baseball players for the next level and beyond baseball. My focus for the evening was Catching Skills and Drills, put on by Scott Stricklin from University of Georgia.

Coach Stricklin broke his session down into receiving, throwing, and blocking, the three pillars of the catching game. For each segment, he provided a drill series that he puts his catchers through to work on their skills. I don’t want to word vomit descriptions of the video drills, so I will encourage coaches to get access to the convention videos to see the details. Here’s my thoughts on what was applicable to our catchers:

  • The wall ball drill is great! Especially for use remotely and at home. All they need to do is, from the primary or secondary catching positions, bounce a ball off a wall and receive it with their catching hand. Catchers can spice it up by having someone behind them toss the ball off the wall. It is easily incorporated into daily or pre-game drill work, doesn’t require a coach to be immediately present, and can be modified to work on other skills too. All you need is a ball and a wall!

  • We need to teach our catchers to be “paranoid”, with respect to giving signs to pitchers. This doesn’t happen much at the younger levels, but from about 13U AAA and up, coaches and opponents will always be looking into your catchers’ signs to try and pick off what pitch is coming. Catchers need to be acutely aware of the hitter, 1st base coaches, and 3rd base coaches seeing their signs. If they feel their signs are being picked up or relayed to the opposing team, they need to immediately change their sign system with their pitcher (and even their coach if they have a mound visit available). Having an “outs plus one”, “second sign”, or alternative system as a backup will help with this issue.

Yours in baseball,

Coach Lovie
Baseball Development Lead
Sherwood Park Minor Baseball Association
baseballdevelopment@spmba.ca