Toby Hyde

Rubin on Thole
By Toby Hyde - Oct 15, 2008 2:30 pm

Adam Rubin catches up with C Josh Thole from the Arizona Fall League. Here’s the most important part:

Q: You had been primarily a first baseman with the Mets before ‘08, no?

A: “This last year was the first tine that I did a lot of catching. I think I caught about 70 games. That’s the most I’ve ever caught. I was drafted as a catcher. Then when I got to the Mets I caught a little bit - in the Gulf Coast, Kingsport and then Savannah just a handful of games. I mainly played first base. Getting back into the catching, it’s a lot different here than what I had to go through in high school. It’s kind of like starting from scratch. I kind of redid everything, from the stance to throwing to second base to blocking. Everything has just been a whole big change for me. Bobby Nadal, our catching coordinator, really has been putting in a lot of time with me.”

Bobby Nadal is a tireless worker and a funny dude.  “It’s kinda like starting from scratch” tells you everything you need to know about just how hard it is to play catcher at the professional level.

RSS feed

1 Comment »

Comment by NateW
2008-10-17 08:33:02

This probably explains the trend to move catchers to 1B/DH and then moving them back to C. They don’t know how to play the position when they are drafted…

 
Name (required)
E-mail (required - never shown publicly)
URI
Your Comment (smaller size | larger size)
You may use <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong> in your comment.