I did not realize that Gleyber Torres ran slowly. He once again led off a game by reaching first, this time on a single. Then Juan Soto hit a ball into the outfield that split the right and center fielders and rolled quickly to the wall. Once the ball split the outfielders, I thought Torres should score easily, but he was thrown out by a hand. He may have needed to hold up for a second as he thought the line drive might be caught, but the replay showed he just doesn’t run that fast.
The Yankees have the bases loaded with two out after two hit by pitches, but they have yet to score in the first inning.
Update: Anthony Rizzo flies out to end the inning.
And to Cleveland’s credit, the throw from the outfield and the relay throw were both perfect.
The Dodgers lead the Marlins 14-3 in the top of the eighth inning, and Shohei Ohtani already played a monster of a game. Early on he knocked out two doubles and stole a base, his 50th. He would add another steal before coming to bat in the sixth and seventh inning, homering in both for his 49th and 50th of the season. That puts him all alone in the 50-50 club.
Ohtani came into this game in a bit of an on base slump. Since the start of August he owned a .235 BA with a .298 OBP. Twenty three of his 42 went for extra bases, including sixteen home runs. If this game marks the return of Ohtani as a complete hitter, the Dodgers are looking much better going into the playoffs.
Shohei Ohtani hit his 48th home run of the season to match his 48 steals. That gives him a power/speed number of 48, second all-time to Ronald Acuna Jr.in 2023. In looking at the top PS numbers, none of the top scores came with the same number of home runs and steals. Ohtani seems to have been even a number of times this season. Canseco in 1988 and Bonds in 1996 were both 42 home runs and 40 steals. Soriano in 2002 was 39 HR and 41 SB. Vladimir Guerrero in 2002 and Matt Kemp in 2011 were both 39 home runs and 40 steals. You need to go down to Shawn Green in 1998, who was 35-35. Maybe it’s a Dodgers thing.
Also, with the top two PS number coming in the era of bigger bases and limited pick offs, some people might see Alex Rodriguez‘s 1998 season of 42 homer and 46 steals, a 43.9 PS, as the best power-speed season of all time. On the other hand, most of the other high PS numbers came in the steroid era, so maybe this is a good ranking after all.
The Reds beat the Brewers 8-5 Saturday afternoon, with rookie Elly De La Cruz impressing again. He picked up two singles to raise his batting average to .328 and his OBP to .366. His second single, however, was followed by a steal of second, a steal of third, and a steal of home, all in the same seventh inning plate appearance by Jake Fraley. Fraley ended up walking. De La Cruz has now stolen 16 bases in 18 attempts.
I just saw a slow motion replay of Giancarlo Stanton’s swing on his home run, and he is looking right at the ball as he hits it. One might think the eye would waver a little, but I’m always impressed by the ability of the batter to watch the ball to the point of contact.
Buster Posey hits a ball off the wall in rightfield, and easily stretched a triple into a double. The ball bounced off the wall over the head of Mookie Betts, and Betts had to chase it down. It would seem Posey didn’t want to run on Betts’s arm with two outs and took the easy double. Given the ball got away from Betts, he should have reached third easily if he had been running harder.
The Dodgers are Giants are scoreless in the bottom of the first.
Update: Brandon Crawford strikes out to end the inning, and taking third is moot.
Two wrongs don’t make a right. I don’t know why Alex Verdugo of the Red Sox tried to advance to third base with two out. I’ve always heard that you never make the first or third out at third base. That said, I hate the call of out when someone bounces off a base. Verdugo took a poor risk, but he should have been safe.
Boston and Tampa Bay go to the ninth tied at five.
In the bottom of the seventh, Randy Arozarena does it again. He walks for the second time in the game, then goes to third on a Wander Franco double. Arozarena then steals home to extend the Rays lead over the Red Sox to 5-0. That his third run scored of the game for Mr. October of the 21st century.
Trea Turner scores from first base on what is called an infield single, but it really did get by the infielders into the outfield. Turn was also running on the play, so he more or less scored from second base. Great hustle, and Dodgers fans have to be very happy with this trade. The Dodgers beat the Angels 8-2.
“In fact, I would say he’s one of the best baserunning coaches this game has got. No one cares or works harder than that guy. I know when you get on the dark side of things it’s easy to throw somebody under the bus. It’s easy to point a finger at somebody and lay blame there…”
PinstripeAlley.com
The author takes Cashman to task for that comment:
The GM speaks as if “culpability” and “responsibility” are synonyms — they are not. The team’s poor baserunning may or may not be someone’s fault, but it most certainly is someone’s responsibility, and that responsibility isn’t being fulfilled. Whether that’s Willits, third-base coach Phil Nevin (the Yanks lead MLB in outs at home by a good margin), or manager Aaron Boone – someone needs to step up and fix matters.
I agree. I suspect the team is just old and slow, and given their overall poor offensive performance they are taking chances advancing that they would not need to do if they hit for more power. In general, the more power a team generates, the less they need to force base advancement. A home run or a double will let a runner score as easily from second as from third. Bring back the power, bring back the runs, and problem goes away. Until then, the coaching staff needs to figure out who can run and who can’t, and be content with taking a base at a time.
Bellinger lined what appeared to be a two-run homer to left-center in the third inning — a ball that hit off the glove of outfielder Raimel Tapia and bounded over the fence.
Turner was on first base at the time and believed the ball was caught. As he retreated to first base, Bellinger passed him in the confusion, prompting umpires to call him out.
ESPN.com
Both runners made a mistake because they thought the ball might be caught. Bellinger ran hard because it might be in the park, and Turner retreated when he saw the ball hit the glove. It’s one of those random events that keeps the game interesting, although in general I don’t think that’s how baseball wants to decrease home runs.
Ji-Man Choi of the Rays singles, the goes first to third on a Manuel Margot single to left. That sets Choi up to score on a sacrifice fly by Joey Wendle, and the Rays lead the Dodgers 6-2. Choi impressed me with his speed going first to third. He doesn’t look like he should be fast.
Update: Will Smith gets the run back in the bottom of the sixth as he homers into the rightfield stands. That’s 13 RBI in 14 games for Smith this post-season.
Ian Desmond tries to tag up from first on a fly ball to leftfield, where Kris Bryant is playing. Bryant makes a good throw, and Desmond is out on a close play. That’s a gift out to the Cubs.
The Rockies are up 1-0 on the Cubs at the stretch.
Jose Ramirez stole his 30th base Sunday afternoon to become the first 30 HR, 30 SB player on the Indians since 2008. With a high batting average, high OBP, high slugging percentage, and a high stolen base percentage, Ramirez can hurt an opponent in many ways.
Power and speed is also a general feature of the Indians this season. Bill James invented power-speed number of measure what player or teams are good at both hitting home runs and stealing bases, as the two often do not go hand in hand (lots of home runs make out on a caught stealing more costly). The Indians came into the day with a power-speed number of 145.1, the best in the majors. The Brewers rank second with a mark of 136.1.
The Phillies entered Friday with 16 steals in 24 attempts. Last season, they ranked fifth-to-last in stolen bases, as they swiped just 59 bases in 84 attempts. Kapler and Flores told the runners during spring training to be aggressive. Find your limits, they said.
That a 66.7% success rate this season, versus 70.2% in 2017. In a run environment like the current one, a 2/3 success rate is about break even in terms of runs generated. They may be running more often, but so far they’ve done a poor job of picking their spots.
With the Rockies leading the Nationals 5-4 in the bottom of the eighth, Michael Taylor doubles with two out. Going against common practice, he tries to steal third with two outs, and makes it. With Adam Ottavino on the mound, Taylor dances down third base and distracts the pitcher, who steps off the rubber. On the next pitch, Ottavino unleashes a wild pitch, and Taylor scores. That ties the game, and the team go to the ninth due to aggressive base running.
Update: Former Nationals infielder Ian Desmond homers in the ninth, and the Rockies win 6-5. Colorado took three of the four games in the series.
Aaron Judge is called out returning to first on a fly out. It looks like he was actually safe at first, but he appears not to have touched second on his way back. So the call is going to be right for the wrong reason! That will end the fourth inning. Neither the Astros nor the Yankees have scored.
Update: Judge is out on appeal.
Update: It goes down as a caught stealing, as Judge ran on the play.
Gordon makes it clear he steals off the pitcher. He studies video of the pitcher’s delivery until he picks up the tell that indicates the pitcher is going home. Once he has that, he knows when to go. I also loved the story of how Gordon used the long hair of a pitcher to gain an advantage.
I really like the graph at the top of the leader board, however, showing the distribution of sprint speed by position. Centerfielders are the fastest, with outfielder generally faster than infielders. The leftfield versus rightfield comparison is very intersting, with the speed of leftfielders having a wider distribution (higher standard deviation?) than rightfielders. I suspect this has a lot to do with the home park. The Yankees want a very fast outfielder in left, the Red Sox want the fast player in right.
Bryce Harper just did something rather impressive. He swung at a high pitch that shattered the bat. The ball squirted into leftfield, as there as a shift to the right. Harper, due to the bat explosion, didn’t see the ball at first. It took a second for him to realize it was fair, and then he took off. He turned on the jets early, and wound up at second with a double. I thought he was going to be out easily, but the throw was poor. Harper gave the defense an extra second and still turned a single into a double.
The Nationals and Braves are scoreless in the top of the fourth.
The Phillies and Nationals go to the tenth inning tied at two. Still tied in the bottom of the 10th, Bryce Harper leads off with a single, a line drive hit so hard, none of the shifted players had time to get to it. Daniel Murphy comes up and takes drives the ball the other way. The outfield was shifted toward right, so the ball lands in far left field and gets by Howie Kendrick. With Harper lighting the afterburners, he comes around to score ahead of relay throw, and the Nationals win 3-2.
It’s fun watching Harper run like that. The first time I saw him play was in Boston. He did not start, which was disappointing. He pinch hit in ninth inning with the score tied at three. He then scored from first on a double to right field. In that game and today, you got the feeling that Bryce, with his helmet flying and his hair waving the breeze was just having an incredible amount of fun.
On another note, the Neural Network with Park successfully predicted Murphy would be the most likely hitter to get a hit today. After his Friday 2 for 5, Murphy is hitting .444.
The assumption to make, then, is that Goldschmidt possesses other qualities that manifest in his base-stealing success. He does. What Goldschmidt lacks in straight-line speed, he atones for with a combination of attributes that are tougher to measure, like his reaction time, his pattern-recognition skills, his opportunism, and his boldness.
I like that pattern recognition skills are included in the list. So much of baseball is about developing good pattern recognition skills, and often the big mistakes we see on the field (from players and umpires) is when a situation arises when the pattern recognizer fails. The two best examples I can think of were A.J. Pierzynskirealizing that a third strike was seen by the umpire as dropped, and the blown call on Aarmando Galarraga’s perfect game. Nice to see this AI term making it’s way into the baseball literature.
So, did Hosmer intentionally not go down the line too much, to force Wright to make a play at 1B, so that Hosmer could run home? It would seem that the smart play from Hosmer would have been to go down the line some 5-8 feet, and either keep the batter from being putout, or if Wright goes to first, have a much easier chance of scoring.
No one was covering third at the time, and Flores was taking his time getting over there (when I saw the play live, I thought he had bumped Wright). There’s a discussion of the probabilities in the comments, but I don’t think that was going through Hosmer’s head. I like the suggestion that he thought the ball was a line drive, so didn’t break too far from the bag.
It also strikes me that he might have calculated the play as a steal of home, with the long throw and the short throw reversed. If you watch the video, Hosmer’s lead is about what a runner gets at first when he’s trying to steal. Hosmer starts moving as Wright goes into his throwing motion, but it’s more of a stutter step than a full take off. Of course, the two throws have a bit farther to travel than mound to home to second, and it was a first baseman, rather than a catcher throwing.
With Daniel Murphy on first, Lucas Duda draws a one-out walk. The shift was on, and all three skill infielders were around second base. When Murphy reached second, he started running and got to third base where no one was covering. He then scores on a deep fly ball, and the Mets tie the Dodgers at two in the top of the fourth. Wow. Horrible defense by the Dodgers, brilliant base running by Murphy.
Lorenzo Cain just scored from first on a single. He was off and running with the pitch, so he was almost at second when the ball landed. Carlos Gomez slipped fielding the ball, and that little bit of time was all that Cain needed to score. Impressive base running cuts the Astros lead over the Royals to 2-1 in the bottom of the fourth inning.
Update: In the fifth, after a ground rule double puts men on 2nd and 3rd, Mike Fiers comes in to face Alex Rios. Rios doubles, and Royals take a 3-2 lead.
Update: A sacrifice hit and a sacrifice fly bring Rios around to score an insurance run, and the Royals lead 4-2.
Elvis Andrus knew he was going to pull off a straight steal of home.
Moments after Andrus’ go-ahead, run-scoring single keyed a three-run play, the Rangers’ shortstop capped the four-run seventh inning by stealing home and leading Texas to an 8-6 win over the San Diego Padres on Tuesday night.
“First pitch, the guy actually takes a couple of seconds with his head down,” Andrus said. “The second time he did it, I said ‘Let’s try it. Let’s see what happens.’ “
Very cool. I love hearing about the thought process on plays like that.
He’s probably right but when I clicked the replay on his post and saw where the ball was in the outfield as Gordon was approaching third, I thought he’d be dead at the plate. But I couldn’t really be sure because I could really see the ball or the outfielders or the shortstop — the camera was focused on Gordon. Which reminded me of another complaint I’ve had the past few years with TV baseball: the HD cameras and HD slow motion, and the skill of the camera operators, have all combined to make TV baseball a game of closeups. Closeups of the pitcher-batter-catcher during each pitch are great. But baseball is a game of physical context. The decision the runner makes as he is approaching a base depends on how the ball is bouncing at the base of the fence. Watching them in close-up makes separate incidents out of one unified incident. A closeup of a runner running the bases means nothing (a closeup of the flight of the ball heading for the fence is just stupid). A closeup of a fielder making a great play is a bit more interesting but only if we also get the longer view — the path of the ball as it travelled toward him, the runner as he tried to beat out the play or advance a base.
If you were at the ballpark last night and were watching the fielders kick around and then throw in the ball, and at the same time were able to shift your gaze to the runner, you would have had a much better sense of whether sending Gordon was the right play. The closeups were great. But they would have been better if Fox also had a camera or two position high up in the stadium, to show us the whole play as it unfolded.
I think the TV networks have been seduced by the admittedly great technology.
Nates analysis is spot on, and I suspect the third base coach might be one of the few people who didn’t make that decision as the play unfolded.
I agree with Tom that you really need to see the whole field from a high-home camera to get an idea of what really happened. When the video at 538 goes to Gordon, he seems to be slowing down, giving me the impression that the stop sign was put up early. I also wonder if Gordon was thinking single, and played it safe around first base, and was not able to get back up to speed quickly (he has a lot of mass to accelerate). If there is video at a wider angle, I’d love to see it. Maybe someone in the upper deck recorded the play on their cellphone?
Update: Here is video from the third base line:
Again, we don’t see Gordon running until the cutoff man has the ball. At that point, Alex is about 2/3 of the way between second and third, so it seems it would not be a good play send him at that point. It had taken ten seconds for Alex to get to that point, which tells me he was running pretty fast. It would have taken a good throw, but even a throw that was slightly off might have given Posey time to get back to the plate for a tag. I hope someone posts a better angle of the play.
