Baserunning Opportunities

One of the biggest areas of opportunity for improvement for the Warriors is baserunning. After yesterday's game against Oak Lawn, we reviewed some of the areas that the team struggled with during the doubleheader.

When the ball is in possession of the pitcher or catcher, our baserunners must keep their eyes on the ball. Baserunners must know where the ball is at all times and gauge their leads accordingly. Many Warriors' baserunners find themselves looking down at the ground, or looking at a coach, or studying the flight patterns of planes coming in and out of Midway airport while standing off the base! This opens the team up to taking unnecessary outs--and those outs usually occur at the worst times.

Runners positioned on third base need to do a better job reacting to batted balls. With less than two outs, a runner on third base needs to tag immediately on fly balls to the outfield so that they are in a position to start running to home upon the catch. Many of our runners start moving on contact and then must try to return to the base AFTER the ball is caught--which gives the defense a much better shot at throwing the runner out. A runner on third should be looking at the trajectory of the ball coming off the bat. If it is rising (line drive or fly ball), the runner must start moving back to the base. The runner will move back to the base regardless of how far the ball is hit. Even if the ball is smashed 600 feet, runners must return to the base as they will score easily whether the ball is caught OR falls to the ground. Runners will not score easily if they are already approaching the plate and then must RETURN to third base after a ball is caught.

In most cases, if it is hit on the ground (with the infield back), the runner will immediately move towards home and try to score if the ball passes the pitcher (although this is situational and the coach will advise the runner prior to the play occurring).

Things are different for runners positioned on first or second base with less than two outs! If the ball is hit in the air to the outfield, runners should not tag. Instead, runners should go to a "half way" position. Technically, it's not really half way. Runners should get just far enough off the base so that they can return safely if the ball is caught and the outfielder attempts to make a throw back to the base. But, runners need to get out there enough so that if the ball drops they can try to beat the force at the next base. So, a runner on first base will get further off the base on a fly ball hit to leftfield than he would on a fly ball hit to rightfield--as the leftfielder has a much longer throw back to first. This is very different from third base where a runner is more concerned about tagging to score.

The last area (which we haven't yet discussed) is being aware of situations. We want our baserunners to be very aggressive, but only when the situation warrants it. We take risks when there is a potential reward. It is not smart baseball to take overly aggressive primary leads off first base when the bases are loaded with a 3-0 count on the hitter! For one thing, there's a runner already positioned on the next base which eliminates the steal. Also, pitchers in that situation usually act like caged animals desperately looking for a way out. The Warriors don't want to help an opponent get out of these situations that easily.

Overall, the team is doing a great job picking up baseball concepts. However, this is an area that we must improve upon. We will discuss this, as well as some pick off plays, at Friday's practice. We expect to see good progress during the Hickory Hills game on Sunday.