Toledo Mud Hens manager Doug Mientkiewicz talks Tigers prospect development in his office in Toledo on Saturday, June 8, 2019. Gregory Levinsky, Detroit Free Press
Jake Rogers, the Detroit Tigers' top catching prospect, caught the ball and assumed the umpire saw it as a strike.
He dropped his mitt out of the strike zone, and Bobby Wilson, a catcher sitting on the bench, noticed.
“Sometimes, on pitches, you don’t show the umpire long enough,” Wilson told Rogers. “Hold it a split second longer.”
It’s a little tactic that makes all the difference, even for someone like Rogers, who is already a gifted defensive catcher.