Lanning ready to take over as catcher

LINCOLN - Jeff Christy came to the Nebraska baseball program two seasons ago as an insurance policy at catcher. He left last June as a sixth-round pick in the major-league draft.

Now, Jeff Lanning hopes to show the Huskers they have another talented catcher who will leave them in good hands.

“There's a lot (to gain) from watching (Christy), because he did what he had to do on offense. Defensively, he did more than he had to do,” the sophomore from Ankeny, Iowa, said. Lanning is one of three players contending to replace Christy, who will be in the Minnesota Twins' spring training camp. “That's what I'm going for - to be as good as I can behind the plate, and what happens offensively is what happens.”

Lanning watched Christy hit .284 and start 52 of Nebraska's 59 games last season. The previous year, Christy started 64 of the Huskers' 72 games and batted .236 after the player expected to win the job, junior college All-American Adam Moore, went down with a knee injury.

Moore ended up transferring to Texas-Arlington and also wound up a sixth-round pick in the June draft.

Meanwhile, Lanning played in just 14 games last year, but produced six hits in 20 trips to the plate. In his only at-bat in a Big 12 Conference game, he drove in a run against Texas Tech.

He's competing for more playing time with Mitch Abeita and Mark Hightower.

Abeita is a junior transfer from North Central Texas Community College, where last season he hit .303 after hitting .330 as a freshman. Other schools that recruited Abeita included Oklahoma State and Texas Tech.

Hightower is a junior walk-on from Elkhorn who played in just four games last season after seeing action in 18 as a freshman.

“They're all kind of the same age, and nobody's head and shoulders above each other, ability-wise,” said hitting coach Andy Sawyers, a former Husker catcher now in charge of that position. “We might take a couple lumps early, because those kids are growing. But that's life.”

Sawyers calls Lanning the most rounded of the three, Abeita the most gifted behind the plate and lauds Hightower for his ability to work with pitchers.

Considering the inexperience at catcher, it's no surprise that Sawyers is taking special care to emphasize the positives.

He seems especially patient with Lanning, a multi-sport star in high school who played baseball only during the summer before coming to Nebraska.

“One thing Jeff needs to do is give himself a little more credit. He's a damn good player and can really throw,” Sawyers said. “All those things that go into (developing), those are experiences, and you can't learn that in practice. He might've only caught 25, 30 games a year, where Christy played 30 games of high school, 50 more in (American) Legion and then a ton in junior college.”

Lanning did earn a spot as a Northwoods League All-Star Game last summer while hitting .273, with a team-high 24 RBIs and 26 walks at Waterloo, Iowa.

Since returning to Nebraska, he's been concentrating on tightening up some fundamental skills behind the plate, particularly involving the handling of left-handers (something he had little experience doing before he was a Husker).

“I focused a lot on the defensive part, because the hitting will come,” Lanning said. “Really, if you're going to have a catcher, he's got to be defensively sound. I'm not really looking to hit .300. I'm looking to come out and have a strong spot behind the plate. And when I do hit, it's just a bonus, to me.”

Sounds a lot like what Nebraska's catcher was saying two seasons ago. And you know now how that worked out.