New York Times

March 11, 2001

By BUSTER OLNEY

TAMPA, Fla., March 10: The clues are there, right in front of Jorge Posada, some as obvious as a black eye, others more subtle. The Yankees' catcher crouches behind home plate and looks for the clues and tries to figure out a way to conquer the hitter who looms in the batter's box.

These are some of the lessons Posada has learned since he switched from second base to catcher. Look at the hitters' hands; his hands will tell you something, Posada says. If the batter holds his hands high as he prepares to swing, then he is almost certainly a low-ball hitter, because of the downward arc his bat must take. He is probably more vulnerable to the high fastball. If the batter holds his hands close to his body, then he is probably not very good at hitting pitches inside.

Look at the hitter's feet, watch to see how they move and shift from pitch to pitch. Roberto Alomar will edge toward the very front of the batter's box sometimes when Mariano Rivera is pitching, which would seem to be counterintuitive; Rivera throws very hard and when Alomar moves toward him, he is sacrificing milliseconds of reaction time. But Posada knows how smart Alomar really is. What Alomar is trying to do is hit Rivera's hard-breaking cut fastball before it begins to veer.

Look at the hitters' feet and hands, and ignore their words, because they are often deployed in deception. "They'll talk to you," Posada said. "Cal Ripken is very good at it. He's telling you, `Oh, my back is killing me, my back is killing me,' " said Posada, smiling. "You throw the ball inside because he says his back is killing him and all of a sudden he turns on it. Cal is always saying he's hurt."

Watch the hitter react to certain pitches, see how they flinch. If a young right-handed batter is facing Orlando Hernández for the first time and he almost falls over as he flails at El Duque's sweeping slider, it's easy to recognize his confusion. Beware of the savvy veteran, however. In El Duque's first professional start, he threw a curveball to Tampa Bay's Fred McGriff and McGriff swung awkwardly, his hands jerking like a casual fisherman who had inadvertently hooked a shark. Later in the game, Hernández threw the same pitch in the same spot and when McGriff smoothly launched the ball into the stands at Yankee Stadium, El Duque turned and stared in disbelief at Posada, and they both realized they had been set up.

Beware of the savvy veteran, like Mo Vaughn. He bends at the waist and leans over the plate, and pitchers will try to pump fastballs inside. Posada looks at his feet constantly to see if Vaughn has changed his placement, to see if he is backing up, and Vaughn almost always stays in the same spot. But what Vaughn does, in anticipating the inside fastball, is to turn his front foot slightly as he swings and draw his torso away from home plate and suddenly, explosively, he has smashed an inside fastball into the stands.

Beware of the patient veteran, like Jim Edmonds. "If you make him look bad on a pitch early in a game, then he will spend the rest of the game waiting for you to throw him that pitch again," Posada said.

In other words, if Edmonds is fooled by a curveball in his first at-bat, swinging awkwardly, then he will anticipate that curveball the rest of the game, figuring the pitcher will eventually come back to it. "And he will take fastballs right down the middle and might strike out a couple of times as he waits," Posada said. "But when you throw that curveball again, he won't miss it; he will hit the heck out of it. I don't know how he can be that patient."

Joe Girardi, the catcher who preceded Posada, was adept at reading hitters, at reading discomfort from the uncertain movements of their hands and feet. "Joe's great at it," Andy Pettitte said. "But sometimes, Joe could get carried away with that stuff and outthink himself."

The clues are in front of you, and you are trying not to give away your own clues. The runner at second base is staring in at your signs and trying to decode everything and relay information to the hitter - most important, the location of the coming pitch. Posada glances at the runner to see if he is turning his head toward second, or pointing at the base, or shifting his feet; these are all ways of relaying information. The Indians seem particularly good at this, with a lineup laden with veterans. If Posada thinks the runner has his signs, he will change them subtly, without going to the mound; these are the countermeasures.

Posada looks at the pitcher, tries to get a read on his frame of mind. When Pettitte is pitching, look at his eyes. "If his head is lowered and he's just looking at me, I know he's going to have a good game," Posada said. "If he wanders around with his eyes, then I try to get his attention. I go out to the mound and I say: `What are you looking at? You're working with me, you're not working with the fans. You better focus on me again.' "

When Roger Clemens pitches, Posada tries to get a sense early of how good his fastball is going to be. Posada will go out to the bullpen and feel the ball thumping into his mitt and know whether Clemens's is overpowering, or if his stuff is mediocre. "The fastball is the key," Posada said. "He's asking, `Is my ball coming out good?' "

Posada gets a very early read on Hernández, before he dons a uniform. "His pregame preparation will tell you a lot about if he's going to have a good game," Posada said. "If he's in the clubhouse and getting ready for the game when we get out of batting practice, then he's going to be on. If he's just sitting around the clubhouse, then he's not into it. The pitchers, they have to get focused, and some of them get focused easier than others. Duque is the toughest one to get focused."

Rivera jogs in from the bullpen, and everything seems the same, the same stride, glove always in his right hand. He warms up with that free and easy motion, and Posada thinks this is when he can get a read on Rivera. If the game is close - and it usually is when Rivera comes in - Posada will nudge Rivera only a little, like a jockey merely showing a whip to his horse. But if the situation is not dire, then Posada will go to the mental whip and try to pump up his pitcher.

"He's almost like a kindergarten teacher on the day we pitch," Pettitte said of Posada. "Whether we got it or not, he's got to try to keep our mind frame in it and continually try to build us up like we do have it. You're going to have days that you don't have it, and you need that.

"He's definitely more calm than he used to be. I think he has more patience than he used to have as a catcher. Everything that he does out there - his body language, his emotion, whatever - all translates for a pitcher, in how he's going to throw a game. So it's very important for us as pitchers to have him relax back there and be confident whenever we might not be confident, to try to keep us positive."

Posada crouches behind home plate. Everything is in front of him. He looks for the clues.