TAMPA, Fla. -- Gary Sánchez anchored his right knee low to the ground, nearly touching the dirt, then popped out of his crouch and fired a strike to second base. This is part of the new approach the Yankees believe can unlock the catcher’s full potential behind home plate.

At the suggestion of new catching coach Tanner Swanson, the Yankees’ backstops are all testing the knee-down setup at varying degrees, with the intent of improving the ability to steal strikes on borderline pitches at the bottom of the zone. The main beneficiary could be Sánchez, whose pitch framing was said to regress last season when he focused more on blocking balls.

“It's a little hard, because it's something new that you have to adjust to,” Sánchez said through an interpreter. “I think we've had about a week since we started working together. I can tell you that now I feel much better than Day 1, which is understandable, right? It's a learning process. Anytime you try something new, you need time for you to make that adjustment.”

According to Statcast, Sánchez generated a minus-4 rating in framing runs saved last year (49th overall) and had a 47 percent called strike ratio on borderline pitches, which was slightly below league average. Sánchez’s numbers in those departments were better in 2018, when he had plus-3 runs saved and 49.9 percent of borderline strikes called.

“I say there's still a lot of meat on that bone,” manager Aaron Boone said. “He's improved a lot over the last couple of years. We feel like with Tanner coming in and the work they've already begun, we feel like there's more there to be had. With him being open to it and continuing to work hard at that craft, I'm confident we'll see the those results as the season unfolds.”

The Yankees’ third catching coach in the past four years, Swanson was hired from the Twins' organization, where he spent the last two seasons overseeing Minnesota’s Minor League catching.

The knee-down style was part of what he calls a “trial and error” experiment, one that yielded success at the Major League level with Mitch Garver -- a player who boasts a similar offensive profile to Sánchez, with accompanying defensive criticisms.

“If you get into a lower position where you can control the bottom of the zone, you handle more pitches with depth,” Swanson said. “That's where a majority of a borderline pitches live, and it’s probably the part of the zone that can be exploited from a framing standpoint. We all know what Gary can do with his arm so, it's mostly the receiving and the blocking -- trying to clean that up and find a position that allows him to do a lot of those things at a high level.”

Swanson believes that the knee-down approach could have health benefits for Sánchez, who has battled groin issues in recent years, and that the gains Sánchez has seen in the blocking department can continue. In what has been a hot-button issue throughout his career, Sánchez led the Majors with 34 passed balls over the 2017-18 seasons. He reduced that number to seven last year, in 742 2/3 innings.

“We're not punting on any of those things,” Swanson said. “The goal is to control the baseball, to control the strike zone, to limit extra bases. We’re not putting all our eggs in one basket at the expense of other things. We want him to be dynamic in every catcher related skill.”

According to Swanson, Sánchez exhibited immediate buy-in to the plan and has continued to maintain that effort level through the early days of camp, looking forward to testing how it plays in Grapefruit League action.

“It's been great,” Swanson said. “For a guy at his level to be willing to make some of the changes we're asking him to make, I think it says a lot about what Gary Sánchez is all about behind the scenes. He’s been eager, interested, asking questions, working through things and getting after it from a training standpoint. He wants to be good. He wants to be great.”