(It has come to my attention that some of you really, really like the articles about baseball and if that keeps being the case and the number of views warrants it, I’ll keep writing about baseball just as long as you keep reading what I write. So if you like the baseball stuff, read it and share it and you’ll get more baseball stuff.)
As I’ve said on many occasions and intend to keep right on saying, knowing what’s happening makes baseball much more interesting, plus you can go to games and irritate your close friends and complete strangers by “mansplaining” baseball and I don’t see why “mansplaining” should be limited to men, a feeling that definitely proves I’m not a sexist because I truly believe from the bottom of my heart that women are just as capable as men when it comes to being loudmouth assholes.
And if you don’t believe me, just ask Whoopi Goldberg.
Today we’ll talk about outfield positioning and the importance of the routine play and right now that sounds boring even to me, but it really isn’t, so stick with me and we’ll start the interesting stuff with the “straight up” position.
Playing “straight up”
While it sounds like a drink order or a healthy male who has just seen Zoe Kravitz in that Catwoman suit, “straight up” refers to outfield positioning and here’s what it means:
Walk from first base to second base and then continue walking for 70-to-75 steps and you’ve reached the left fielder’s “straight up” position.
Walk from third base to second base, continuing walking for 70-to-75 steps and you’ve reached the right fielder’s “straight up” position.
Walk from home plate to second base, continue walking for 70-to-75 steps and you’ve kinda reached the center fielder’s “straight up” position, but the centerfielder can’t play true straight up because then he’d be looking at the pitcher’s back which would block his view of home plate.
All other positioning is done off the “straight up” position and I once had a coach tell me that if the grounds crew would let him, he’d walk it off and spray paint a dot on the “straight up” spot, but since the grounds crew won’t let coaches do that, smart outfielders walk it off and drop a handful of sunflower seeds on that “straight up” position so they can find it again once the game starts.
Most dugout have two openings and when a team is on defense the outfield coach will stand in the opening closest to the outfield and help position his outfielders, but to do that he needs a visual reference point.
How reference points work
So let’s say the left fielder walks it off during batting practice and positions himself “straight up” and the outfield coach looks for a landmark behind him and knows when his left fielder stands directly under the “A” in the All-State Insurance sign he’s in the right spot.
The outfield coach needs to have those visual reference points for all three outfielders in all 30 ballparks.
But to use that visual reference point the coach has to always stand in the same spot and when I explained this to a TV director, he said they asked a coach to move because he was blocking their shot and the coach said he couldn’t and the TV director said:
“We thought he was just being a dick.”
So me mansplaining what the coach was doing made peace between him and the camera crew and if you want me to give Mideast Peace a shot, call my agent just as soon as I get one.
Watch the outfield coach and if he points at an outfielder and waves his hand straight up and down in front of chest, he’s telling the outfielder to play “straight up.”
Outfielders will often start a game playing “straight up” until they see what kind of control the pitcher has that day and the outfield coach might ask his center fielder if the pitcher is hitting the catcher’s mitt consistently and if he is, then the outfielders can start moving.
But if the pitcher is all over the place, the outfielders will continue to play straight up (we’re done italicizing the phrase) because if the pitcher doesn’t know if the pitch will be inside or outside, the outfielders don’t know where the hitter is likely to hit the ball, so they stay straight up and react to whatever happens.
Bottom line: the defense can’t do any unusual positioning if the pitcher doesn’t know where the ball’s going, although there are exceptions to this because some batters pull absolutely everything no matter where the pitch is located.
Nevertheless, I’ve heard fans complain that their team isn’t doing any exotic shifting and playing seven guys and a beer vendor in left field and they blame the coaches and team for not being up-to-date on defensive positioning when the real problem is the pitcher’s inability to hit the broad side of a barn when he’s standing inside one, but the coaching staff can’t throw the pitcher under the bus and say we’d shift if our pitcher knew where the ball was going.
Or…
A coach can cover his ass by shifting his guys and then, when a ball gets hit through a wide-open spot, say don’t look at me, I positioned my guys in the right place, so talk to the pitching coach who’s clearly doing a horseshit job because when a team starts losing they’re always looking for a scapegoat and you want to make sure it’s not you, but now we’re getting off topic and I’ve still got lots more to say about the routine play without getting into team politics and ass-covering.
Leaving straight up
Now let’s say the pitcher has good control and the outfielders can start moving. There are two foul lines and two gaps (right center and left center) and generally speaking outfielders can cover three out of four.
When a coach explained how this works the example he used was Derek Jeter (which tells you just how long ago this conversation took place) and here’s how the outfield would try to defend the Yankee shortstop:
The right fielder would move toward the right field line, the center fielder would move toward the right-center gap and the left fielder would stay straight up. That meant the undefended area was the left-center gap and if Jeter hit a ball there, the pitcher made a mistake and put the wrong pitch in the wrong location, (although there are exceptions which we’ll get to shortly).
When you see an outfielder race a long way to get to a ball hit into the undefended part of the field and make a catch, look at the pitcher and he’ll tip his cap because the outfielder just saved his ass after the pitcher made a lousy pitch.
Timeout for an exception
There are always exceptions in baseball (which is one of the things that make the game interesting) and let’s look at a ball being hit into an unprotected area.
A hitter can throw all the pregame planning out the window by doing something unusual, something he hasn’t done in the past – maybe a different stance or setting up in a different spot in the batter’s box – and that’s why players need to be able to adjust on the fly and not get caught sticking to a game plan that was built on past statistics that don’t apply to the present.
More on that before we’re through.
The logic behind the Jeter positioning
The right-handed Jeter liked to “inside-out” the ball (make contact with the ball’s inner half) which would send the ball to the right side of the field, so they’d throw fastballs inside so Jeter couldn’t get his arms extended and that meant any ball hit to the right side should be hit weakly. Even if a flare dropped in for a hit, weak contact to the right side meant the pitcher did his job.
But if Jeter hit the ball hard to the right side, that meant the pitcher left the ball too far out over the plate and allowed Jeter to extend his arms and make solid contact.
The left fielder stayed straight up because if the pitcher hung a breaking pitch (which would have less velocity) Jeter would pull the ball and the left fielder would be in the right area.
So while they might “show” Jeter a curve or a slider (meaning throw it for “show,” but not a strike) the plan was to get him out with inside fastballs and if Jeter hit a ball into the unprotected left-center gap that probably meant the pitcher missed his spot.
Also worth knowing: not every team reaches the same conclusions so other teams might have defended Jeter differently.
Timeout for some outfield philosophy
Most teams will position their outfielders for a good pitch not a bad one, meaning they want to take away weakly-hit fly balls that are a product of the pitcher making a good pitch, so they’ll play shallow rather than deep. (There are also exceptions to that and we’ll also get to those eventually.)
If a ball is hit over an outfielder’s head that’s usually a product of a bad pitch.
So generally speaking a ball that drops in-between the infield and the outfield can be blamed on positioning, but a ball hit over an outfielder’s head is the fault of the pitcher.
Time back in
OK, so the pitcher and pitching coach and catcher come up with a game plan and pass that along to the outfield coach and then he positions his outfielders in the most likely spots for the ball to be hit based on the way they plan to pitch each batter. Also, some hitters try to pull the ball for power until they have two strikes; after two strikes they try to wait longer and hit the ball to the opposite field.
Now here’s a different pitching philosophy.
Stay straight up
When I managed a men’s amateur team I was lucky enough to have Danny Jackson pitch for me and Danny had 15 years in the Big Leagues and went to two All-Star Games and won the World Series twice, so I didn’t offer Danny any pitching advice because Danny obviously knew more than me and I was 100 percent sure he could kick my ass.
But I did ask him where he wanted his outfielders positioned and Danny said:
“Put ‘em in the bare spots…they’re there for a reason.”
When you play on amateur fields, the grounds keeping isn’t always the best and bare spots tend to show up at the “straight up” position even though none of us knew what that was and didn’t walk it off.
When I asked Danny why he wanted his outfielders staying straight up, he said every pitch he threw was based on what the hitter did with the previous pitch and didn’t want to get stuck with a game plan that was created before the game ever started. If a hitter showed he couldn’t get around on a fastball, that hitter was getting a lot more fastballs; if a hitter was out in front of a slider, he was getting a lot more sliders.
But Danny’s thinking is now considered Old-School because it’s based on allowing the players to make decisions for themselves as the game unfolds and now it’s more popular to have an intern run some numbers and hand the manager a game plan which the players are supposed to stick to (that’s what they’re looking at when they pull those cards out of their hat or pocket) which is really dumb because the numbers are based on the past and maybe a hitter has made some kind of adjustment that makes that game plan obsolete.
Let’s say the pre-game plan was to get a hitter out with sliders, but the catcher looks down and the hitter has changed where he puts his feet and now he’s up at the front of the box and those sliders won’t be as effective because the hitter’s trying to hit them before they run off the plate.
The only person in the whole ballpark who can see this is the catcher and he needs to make an adjustment and he needs to make it right now and there’s no time to call a meeting of the analytics department and take a vote on whether it’s ok to start throwing inside fastballs.
If you read Moneyball (and I’ve read it four times and it gets dumber every time I read it) one of the big ideas it promotes is the philosophy that the people on the field are there to implement the ideas of the front office which is really stupid if you take it too far because the players are the ones who have to adjust to what they’re seeing that night.
The best play is the routine play
Watch ESPN highlights and they show players overcoming bad positioning or bad pitches with athleticism, so that’s what we think is great defense and it’s not:
A diving catch probably means someone screwed up.
Those are considered great plays because they don’t happen very often which means they’re low-percentage plays and if you rely on low-percentage plays they’re mostly not going to work and you’ll fail more often than you succeed.
That’s why the best play is the routine play.
Once you get an idea of how all this is put together a routine fly ball or grounder is a miracle of preparation and execution: the coach put the players in the right spot and the pitcher put the right pitch in the right spot. But we give standing ovations to lousy preparation and execution and ignore it when everybody does everything right.
Next time, we’ll talk about how you spot a bad outfielder.
Thank you!
“The left fielder stayed straight up because if the pitcher hung a breaking pitch (which would have less velocity) Jeter would pull the ball and the left fielder would be in the right area.
This might be a stupid question but I'm going to ask anyway: I get that a "hanging" breaking ball presents a high, slow pitch that is easy for the batter to see but in order for Jeter to pull the ball, what location was the breaking pitch supposed to go to and where did it end up (inside, middle or outside)? Generally speaking, I read that right-handed pitcher's don't purposefully throw breaking pitches inside to right-handed batters. Are you referring to a left-handed pitcher throwing Jeter a slider or a right-handed pitcher "hanging" a curve down the middle of the plate?