PITCHING – Shake The Catcher Off In Textbook Fastball Counts

(this is an excerpt from Mark Gola’s forthcoming book, Baseball’s Sixth Tool)

With the bases loaded and the 5-hitter at the plate, the pitcher runs the count to 2-0. He does not want to go to 3-0 and be one pitch away from walking a run in, so he's going to throw his most accurate pitch: a fastball. The pitcher toes the rubber, stares in at the sign, and shakes it off. He shakes again before nodding 'yes' to the catcher. He delivers the pitch and the hitter is just late, lofting a short fly ball to the opposite field

Was it a flawed swing or great pitch? Neither. It was doubt on behalf of the hitter.

In this sequence, the catcher is simply giving the pitcher ‘the horns’ which alerts him to shake off the pitcher. (The horns is when the pinkie and pointer finger are extended down.) It's simply for show, but the purpose is to create doubt in the mind of the hitter. Because the batter is convinced he can sit on a fastball in this situation, why not mess with him a little bit? He now begins to question why the pitcher is shaking off signs. "Is he going to throw something off-speed because he knows I'm sitting fastball?'

Confusion and uncertainty reign when we don’t follow – or seem to follow – predictable patterns. That subtle doubt is what can make the hitter a hair late on the incoming fastball. A slight hesitation reading the pitch and then tensing up when rushing to catch up to the fastball makes the barrel late. That is enough to jam the hitter or make him just late enough to avoid catch the ball square

With the count 2-0, you merely threw the 2-0 fastball that everyone was predicting. But because you went through the simple exercise of shaking off the catcher before delivering the pitch, your fastball gained three or four miles per hour. The batter is out and now you can focus on getting ahead of the next hitter.