Left-handed catchers

[44Fishy]

Why don't you ever see catchers who throw left-handed?

 

We had a kid in my high school who was a heckuva athlete and had a cannon for an arm-

he was telling me he had to have his lefty catchers mitt custom made-

 

I had been thinking about it and I couldn't come up with a single example of any major-league catcher who threw lefty-

 

I'm assuming most lefties are encouraged to play 1st base-

but why not let them play catcher?

 

about the only reason I could imagine would be because most hitters in high school are right-handed, making it more difficult for a lefty catcher to make throws to 2nd & 3rd base-

[trwi7]

Players would steal third base easily. They would have to stand up, turn their body towards third and then make the throw.

[Invader3K]

Yeah, I remember Kevin Kennedy giving that exact same explanation on XM. I think they mentioned that there was one backup catcher with a team (Pirates?) years ago who was left handed, but that was the only one they could come up with.

 

Actually, a web search turns up that there were apparently a few lefty catchers in baseball history, but most played in the pre-1900 era.

[pitchleague]

Benny Distefano I believe was the guy Kennedy was talking about.

[Fatter than Joey]

Mike Squires would be another.

[twobrewers]

They would have to stand up, turn their body towards third and then make the throw.

Yadier Molina can snap throw pretty lightning quick to first base. It would really be about the same motion. (Of course, you would have to throw behind the batter)

[colbyjack]

As noted, there are some disadvantages for a LH cacher, but anyone that has that good of a left arm to catch is given a shot to pitch until their left arm falls off.

[burniebrewer]

I had a LH catcher back when I played in the Land O Lakes "minors", which I think was called Rivers or was it called "County" (for high school kids in the summer--I can remember the name). He was my favorite catcher because it seemed the left hand glove helped me pitch more to the outside corner for a RH batter.

[logan82]

They just posted an article over at THT about left handed catchers. Haven't had time to read it yet, but here's the LINK.

 

Edit: Upon further review, it looks like it is about LH hitting catchers. Sorry.

 

LINK to make up for previous link.

 

There have only been 32 left-handed throwing players who caught in at least 1 defensive inning. If you exclude the ten men who only caught in a single game, then you're talking about just 22 players. If you count only those guys who caught 100 or more games in a career, you're down to exactly five left-handed throwing catchers. However, if you're only counting career catchers (minimum of 1,000 games caught), then you have exactly one and that is Jack Clements.