For the final nine games of the 2025, the Miami Marlins ran an experiment in which their assistant pitching coach, Alon Leichman, made pitch selection decisions and communicated those to the catcher via signs from the dugout.
This is a practice that has long been used in the college game but has never seen widespread adoption in MLB.
This offseason, Leichman was hired to be the Rockies pitching coach; with his arrival has come speculation that the Rockies will experiment with calling pitches from the dugout.
Here is what that would look like:
On its face, this appears pretty simple, quick, and seamless. It’s subtle enough that we can’t yet know for sure how significant the effect would be, but we can take a moment to think through possible impacts.
Pitch Selection
It goes without saying that the most obvious thing this would affect is the pitches getting thrown and under what circumstances.
A pitching coach has access to a much larger set of information than a catcher can bring with them onto the field. It follows that decisions made in the dugout are more likely to be optimal, mathematically speaking. Under this system, it is easier to consistently target hitter weaknesses and take advantage of different count/leverage situations.
On the flipside, a catcher does have some information that those in the dugout do not. The vantage point from behind home plate means that a catcher is best equipped to see how each pitch is behaving. Unless the league rules change to allow the use of real time video data mid-game, the catcher is better positioned to understand what the pitcher has a feel for on that particular day.
Catchers
More is expected of a catcher than any other player on a baseball field.
Removing one of those responsibilities from them would free up time that could be used to focus on other aspects of their game. Speculatively, this could be especially beneficial for a bat-first catcher with few professional games caught, such as Hunter Goodman.
The long-term implications for catchers of a single club implementing this strategy, however, are even more complicated.
Most teams expect their catchers to manage a pitching staff and determine pitch sequencing, so being able to do that well is something they value. If Rockies catchers stop being in charge of pitch decisions, that makes their trade value lower and could even suppress their free agent market.
Sign Stealing
In 2022, PitchCom was approved for use in MLB games. This was done, in large part, to limit the ability of other teams to steal the signs of the opposition.
A catcher flashing signs between their crouched legs can only reliably be seen by a runner on second (assuming teams are following the rules surrounding video equipment during games). The same can not be said for signs flashed by a coach in the dugout (who are disallowed from using PitchCom transmitters). For these signs to be visible to the catcher, they must also be visible to most people on the other team, including the active batter.
Pitch Clock
The clip at the top of this article makes it clear that the system can be done quickly and efficiently. I would not expect it to substantially spike the average time it takes to both decide on and then begin executing a pitch by more than a couple seconds.
When a pitcher shakes off the pitch that was called for, however, the additional layer of communication required could potentially add up to more pitch clock violations. This automatic ball from Eury Pérez at the end of last season serves as an example of exactly that:
Thoughts?
With all that being said, this speculation may end up being entirely overblown. We simply won’t have enough data to know the full impact for certain until an MLB team actually does it for more than nine games.
Sound off in the comments if there are any other potential side effects that come to mind!
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