How Red Sox Bullpen Catcher Pulled Off Comical Prank On Pitcher

Major League Baseball pitchers quickly have gotten accustomed to PitchCom, and the Boston Red Sox had bullpen coach Charlie Madden to thank for the team’s quick transition to the technology last season.

Madden was selected in the 24th round of the 2017 MLB Draft, and when he made the transition to a staff role, he wanted to find a way to help the team.

“I was just always looking to be more a part of the team and add value anywhere,” Madden told The Athletic. “So, I just grabbed the manual.”

“Want to avoid calling PitchCom headquarters for customization? Have a 26-year-old pro catcher figure it out,” The Athletic wrote. “Madden tinkered with the device enough that when manager Alex Cora decided in April 2022 he wanted to start using it in games, Madden was ready. The Red Sox were on the road, so Madden sat pregame in the left-field pavilion of St. Petersburg’s Tropicana Field and recorded tracks using downloaded software and a set of headphones with an attached microphone. PitchCom recommends each track be less than a second.”

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Madden revealed to The Athletic that the staff pranked a pitcher so that every button on the PitchCom device said, “Are you mad?”

PitchCom co-founder John Hankins encouraged teams to be as creative as possible but to make sure to be loud and concise, especially to prepare for a loud stadium.

“It feels like it’s screaming in my ear,” Garrett Whitlock told The Athletic. “Can the hitter hear this?”

Whitlock added: “With 15 seconds, you only get two or three shakes before you’re like, I gotta throw whatever they call.

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People like Madden can record themselves calling for a pitch designated on one of the buttons. But the San Francisco Giants ran into trouble when minor league coach Craig Albernaz was tasked with recording. Albernaz, a Fall River, Mass. native, had a thick Boston accent that was too difficult to decipher for players, per The Athletic.

PitchCom hasn’t been perfect, and pitchers do occasionally run into problems during games. But it is a technology that fans and players grew to normalize as the game evolves to increase the speed of play.