u/BerryRoyal

High Level Throwing not to be confused with High Level Pattern by Teacherman.

Throwing a baseball with a good form might be something everyone on the diamond should be able to do but surprisingly, there are a lot of players that can't full throw properly. As such, errant weak throws are quite common. And I'm sure even those with a decent arm can still further optimize throws.

I found this on my Facebook feed and I looked up the YouTube channel. It has a coach that explains baseball and fastpitch throwing mechanics. How accurate is that explanation? Or is this some AI slop?

I've noticed a key difference between defensive alignments when compared to Co-ed vs Mens. It's really rare for a men's team to use a rover (aka shallow outfielder). Even some Womens league teams tend to use a rover the way its described. Now in co-ed I see these defensive alignments even for male batters so it's not like rovers are only for female batters.

Yet come Mens league, this becomes increasingly rare, even at the recreational tier level. Almost all mens use either a CF duo or a player shaded behind 2B bag. With baseball, there used to be a shift which effectively used a shallow outfielder to steal some hard ground balls/line drives. I'm pretty sure you can throw directly outfield to 1st in mens. So why don't more teams use a shallow outfielder in mens to maybe steal some free outs? Or is there an unwritten rule in mens to not use a baseball-style shift?

How do we decide whether to use a shallow outfielder? I'm slowly trying to learn the ins and outs of the mens game.

A lot of rec-level co-ed teams will put ladies at catcher, usually to hide them on defense. However, a lot of those teams will also rotate the ladies between C and generally 2B/1B/RF/RCF (depending on co-ed ratios). It's become sort of an unwritten rule to not keep the same lady at catcher all game as a way to give her more meaningful play. Of course, if a female (or male) volunteered to lock at catcher the whole game, then that's different.

What about for men's rec leagues or charity tournaments? How do we manage the catcher position? Should we lock him at C the entire game? Or should we rotate them to other positions? The reason I'm asking is because in men's the most common positions females play (2B/1B/RF) tend to become more important due to the increase in lefty batted balls.

Now of course, if he wanted to DH but we needed a 10th man on the field, then we can throw this question out the window. But what about cases where the catcher intended to play other positions (not DH) yet we have better options? Is it still an unwritten rule to move him around? Or do we just lock him there? If we wanted to hide him somewhere else, where would he otherwise play? I know men that join men's leagues tend to be more skilled than co-ed men (on average) but there will always be that new player on the block trying to get used to the men's game or a newbie that only wants to play with men.

I hear posts all the time about what are the most important positions. The answers are generally are more catered towards co-ed. We'll see the SS/3B/LF/LCF at the very top while the rest are more subjective based on strategy.

But what about leagues where it's all the same gender, where the talent is likely better than your average player of that particular gender? Like Mens Leagues or Womens Leagues. How does this affect the priority/importance of defensive position from a team building standpoint? Let's say at rec-based level or the lowest available competitive level.

Or is the position importance ranking just around the same as co-ed?

Tracking a fly ball might sound really easy to a lot of experienced players. What about learning and mastering this technique?

I can track the direction immediately upon contact whether to go left or right. I've made lots of difficult left/right running catches this way. But where it starts becoming challenging is when I need to go back more than 3 steps. I can't tell when the ball is going to be clearly over my head until it's almost at its apex. Though if it comes at an angle like if need to move left or right, I have a far better read. But straight at me I struggle at identifying it. To a lesser extent, I have this issue for sprinting inwards but at least my catch radius is bigger.

I guess this comes with more reps and exposure right? Because it seems like outfield won't see as many batted balls as infield, especially at rec level, much less hard hit fly balls/line drives. At least it's not like baseball where balls that pass the infield are much rarer. Do I have to have someone hit me deep fly balls more often to get used to it? Because it's really hard to find someone with this much power at rec level to hit it hard enough.

As I start moving into men's leagues, there's going to be significantly more batted balls like this so it's best to prepare myself or else anything over my head is an automatic triple/home run.

Obviously both countries can be fairly diverse in terms of slowpitch rules. But if you could narrow down some common rule differences between most Canadian leagues/tournaments vs American leagues/tournaments what would they be?

I think one common one I hear is that in Canada, many leagues flat out prohibit an outfielder from throwing directly to 1B on a dropped ball (like an infielder fielding a ground ball and throwing) while in the US it's more of an unwritten rule for slow runners?