We have gone to them recently because of other coaches stealing signs and because now we never have to re-teach signs to any player when you play common opponents who know our older simple sign system.
They are no different to any other sign system - and much easier to use. We use finger signs to indicate the grid reference, but we can also call out the numbers as needed (like today when there was a lot of glare or a couple of weeks ago when the umpires wanted up deep in the dugout and our catchers couldn't see us easily). The players NEVER miss a sign. We sit there and give 'big' signs - so I put my arm way out in the open and give big, clear finger signs in open view (or just yell it out)
If you didn't need a sign system of some sort you would just yell out what you want the players to do so all this 'too complicated, unnecessary, etc, etc' doesn't resonate with me. It might be somewhat overkill, but it works really well and is easy to use and that is good enough for me.
How we do it - we have 4 grids of 5 x 5 so there is 100 combinations. Across the top is 2 numbers (01,02,03... 23,24,25) and on the left is 5 (1,2,3,4,5) - So the call is 213 - that is 21 on the top and down 3... where an abbreviation for the call is (for example it says CU2 which is Change Up - Zone2)
For pitchers and catchers it is great - For our best pitcher we have 5 locations for fastball, 2 locations for CU, 2 for Drop and 2 for other calls we make. For our #3 we just have FB and CU on the grid.
We use nevermissasign.com to create the bands because I was too lazy to screw around in Excel to do randomization and % of options we wanted for each pitch option. It also prints out a nice coach sheet which we add note grids for tracking pitchers/players/etc
EDIT: I will admit it is fun to openly call signs in. Drives the other coaches who used to steal our signs nuts.
They are no different to any other sign system - and much easier to use. We use finger signs to indicate the grid reference, but we can also call out the numbers as needed (like today when there was a lot of glare or a couple of weeks ago when the umpires wanted up deep in the dugout and our catchers couldn't see us easily). The players NEVER miss a sign. We sit there and give 'big' signs - so I put my arm way out in the open and give big, clear finger signs in open view (or just yell it out)
If you didn't need a sign system of some sort you would just yell out what you want the players to do so all this 'too complicated, unnecessary, etc, etc' doesn't resonate with me. It might be somewhat overkill, but it works really well and is easy to use and that is good enough for me.
How we do it - we have 4 grids of 5 x 5 so there is 100 combinations. Across the top is 2 numbers (01,02,03... 23,24,25) and on the left is 5 (1,2,3,4,5) - So the call is 213 - that is 21 on the top and down 3... where an abbreviation for the call is (for example it says CU2 which is Change Up - Zone2)
For pitchers and catchers it is great - For our best pitcher we have 5 locations for fastball, 2 locations for CU, 2 for Drop and 2 for other calls we make. For our #3 we just have FB and CU on the grid.
We use nevermissasign.com to create the bands because I was too lazy to screw around in Excel to do randomization and % of options we wanted for each pitch option. It also prints out a nice coach sheet which we add note grids for tracking pitchers/players/etc
EDIT: I will admit it is fun to openly call signs in. Drives the other coaches who used to steal our signs nuts.
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