Brent Mayne

Russell Martin

I was watching the Dodger/Arizona game yesterday afternoon and saw Dodger catcher Russell Martin do something really cool. In the second or third inning Drew stole second and Martin took a low cutter to his left (the hardest ball to throw on) and hosed him by a foot. Usually when I see something like that I like to use the TiVo and rewind it to see the footwork, glove work, and release. So I watched the throw from a couple of angles in slow motion and saw something really interesting. First off, his timing was excellent. His exchange was excellent, he stayed really low, and his momentum was correctly going right through the pitcher (as opposed to going around or backwards). Something caught my eye, but it took me about 5 times of looking at it slowly to catch what Martin was doing differently. Basically he saw the runner going and at that moment dropped his right foot back about 6 inches while still staying low in his crouch. Then the ball came in and he took a little jab with his right foot towards second while staying athletic with his upper body and delivered a powerful throw.

The reason I thought it was so interesting was because it was a different way to “stay back” when you see a runner stealing. Like the play at the plate or so many things a catcher does, it is important to attack at the right time. It is a natural tendency to see the runner going and start moving forward or leak as he does. Usually your butt comes up a little and shifts to the left. This is a death move because it causes you to come “unstacked” and makes it really hard to get your feet back under you without sliding way to the left. It also really takes you off the pitch to the left (like a low cutter/slider from a right hander). So this little jab back with the right foot allowed him to move when he saw the runner go, but move in a positive way. A way that kept him athletic and gave him the opportunity to deliver a powerful throw on a really tough pitch to handle. Good stuff. I wonder if he does that on purpose, or even knows what he did. I’m also interested to see if he does that move all the time or just on certain pitches. Who knows, maybe it was just a one time deal. I’ll ask him sometime and let you know what he says. Whatever the case may be, I’m definitely going to see if it’s a teachable move and effective for my students. Here is the sequence. Unfortunately you can’t see the little drop step that happened before all of this. It does show some positive mechanics you might learn from though.  All for now. Thanks a lot Russ.