How to Watch the World Series

Part II: Hitting and Base Running…

Last night the Phillies beat the Astros 6-5 in 10 innings which is fine by me because I like Philly Cheesesteaks (which might explain my waistline) and we should never forget some of those Astros players are cheaters who never got punished and still have their championship rings which I hope they’re embarrassed to wear in public.

Not that I’m prejudiced or anything.

Anyway…

What happened to the starting pitchers followed a couple common story lines: the Astros got to Aaron Nola early, the Phillies got to Justin Verlander late.

Starting pitchers are theoretically in it for the long haul and they have to establish all their pitches so you want to get to them before they get the feel for all those pitches and in the second inning Kyle Tucker homered on the second changeup Nola threw.

Starting pitchers are vulnerable early and late (once they find their rhythm, they can stick it to you pretty good in those middle innings) and the Phillies got to Verlander third time through the order.

After five innings the game was tied 5-5 and stayed that way until the Phillies J.T. Realmuto hit a home run in the 10th and that gets us to the first thing you want to pay attention to when a team is on offense and I’ll try to pick some things that ballplayers pointed out to me that I never would have noticed on my own.   

Pay attention to inside pitches in the late innings

When one run matters in the late innings, a lot of ballplayers will start swinging out their ass in an attempt to hit a home run and win the game.

For most hitters, that means pulling the ball, so smart pitchers stay on the outside part of the plate because if a hitter tries to pull an outside pitch he’s likely to hit a weak grounder to the pull side of the field. (I could go into the technical reasons for that, but trust me, you don’t want me to and we’ve got enough on our plate already.)

So if you see a catcher set up inside in the late innings, don’t leave the room; something loud is about to happen.

In the late innings you might want to pitch guys away (there are always exceptions), but a hitter who’s willing to go the other way presents a lot of problems. Luis Garcia threw J.T. Realmuto six pitches – all away – but the sixth pitch was a fastball up and Realmuto hit the game-winning home run to right field.

Hitters who are one-dimensional – like a pull hitter with power – can hurt you, but you know what you have to do to get them out, while more complete hitters who can pull the ball or go the other way present bigger problems and during the regular season Realmuto hit .408 and slugged .750 when he hit the ball to right field.

According to the internet, Minute Maid Park’s left field wall is 315 feet away, right is 326 feet, center is 409, so like most ballparks power is in the corners and average is up the middle and while they really don’t want to give up any hits, if pitchers are going to give up hits they want to keep the ball in the big part of the ballpark and avoid home runs.

Pay attention to the pitcher’s front foot

There were two stolen bases in the game – one by Kyle Schwarber and one by Jose Altuve – and both were stolen off the pitchers and now I’ll explain what that means.

Let’s say a base runner takes 3.4 seconds to steal second base after he takes his lead at first and the catcher takes 2.0 seconds to receive the ball and throw it to second base (and those are pretty common numbers) the variable is the pitcher and how long he takes to deliver a pitch and if the pitcher does it in 1.3 seconds that 3.4 runner will be out; if he does it 1.5 seconds that 3.4 runner will be safe.

The best catcher in the world can’t throw runners out if the pitcher takes too long to deliver a pitch.

(This is why every first base coach in the universe has a stop watch; they’re checking pitch delivery times.)

The higher the pitcher lifts his front foot, the longer it takes to get it back down on the ground so guys with high leg kicks are vulnerable to the stolen base and Schwarber and Altuve stole on pitches where the pitcher used a high leg kick.

Pitchers can speed up their delivery by using a “slide step” – they barely pick their front foot off the ground and “slide” toward home plate – but unless they’ve really worked on it the slide step can screw up their delivery.

The front foot gets down sooner which means the arm can be late and that means a pitch up in the zone, which is what hitters pray for, assuming they pray and the best story I know about ballplayer religion includes a guy with a stack of Bibles in his locker and on top of the Bibles were some glow-in-the-dark anal beads which indicates an admirable flexibility in attitude and, come to think of it, would probably come in handy and right now I’m not sure if I’m referring to the Bible or the glow-in-the-dark sex toy.

Anyway…

Pay attention to slide steps and how many big hits are given up on high pitches that wouldn’t have been thrown without a potential base stealer on first base.

If a pitcher has trouble throwing strikes out of a slide step – and some do – the runner can just wait until the pitcher gets into a count where he has to throw a strike because the runner knows the pitcher has to use his slower delivery.

Pay attention to good and bad walks

Before you steal second base you need to remember that will open up first base and give the pitcher a handy place to stash a hitter he doesn’t want to deal with.

If you open up first base, the pitcher can work around the guy at the plate so you need to think about who’s on deck and if you want him hitting in this situation and if you’re in the later innings you also need to think about who’s available to pinch hit for the guy on deck and once you go down that rabbit hole you might want to consider who the other team has in the bullpen to face that pinch hitter and whether or not you like that matchup.

When you see coaches talking in the dugout this is the kind of thing they talk about.

(Lots going on out there and we miss most of it.)

We tend to look at a walk and think it’s always good for the hitter and bad for the pitcher and that just isn’t true. Big league pitchers use good walks to work their way through the lineup and they can also use good walks to clog the bases.

Former Royal Billy Butler had five steals in 10 years so pitchers didn’t worry about him swiping half-a-base-per-season and if they fell behind in the count they knew walking Billy might mean the Royals would need three more hits to score him.

There are good and bad walks and you need to know the situation to tell the difference.

Pay attention to the number of outs

Here’s an easy way to think of it:

1. With no outs the team on offense should take no risks on the base paths. You got three more outs to move the runner around the bases and it might be the start of a big inning and you don’t want to screw that up by getting greedy at the wrong time.

2. With one out they should take risks to get to one place – third base – because they can score from third on an out, like a grounder or sac fly, which is why it’s really bad hitting for a hitter to strike out in this situation and feel free to scream at your TV if a guy from your team does that.

3. With two outs they should take risks to get to two places – second base and home plate – because if a runner’s on second he can score on one hit (unless his name’s Billy Butler) and if he stops at third he’s counting on his team getting another two-out hit which generally speaking are hard to come by.

Both Schwarber and Altuve’s steals came with two outs which is a good time to do it.

So there are times it’s smart to be conservative and times it’s smart to take a chance and you need to understand the situation to know if the base runner and/or base coach made the right decision. Just because a runner gets thrown out it doesn’t necessarily mean he did the wrong thing.

Pay attention to good base running

Being a base stealer and a good base runner are two totally different things and slow guys can definitely be good base runners if they pay attention and know when to take an extra 90 feet and I’ll give you a couple of examples.

If you see a base coach hold one finger up in the air and twirl it around he’s reminding the base runner to “look around” so he knows where all the defenders are standing before the pitch is thrown.

For instance:

A runner on first base who has a line drive hit directly over his head who didn’t check the right fielder’s positioning will have to turn and look before taking off, while a runner who saw the right fielder was shifted over toward the right-center gap can take off right away and that might be the difference between being out or safe at third base or home plate.

Also…

The best base runners know whether the outfielders are right or left-handed because if the outfielder catches the ball backhand on his throwing-arm side that closes his front shoulder and puts him in a good position to make a throw; if he catches the ball on his glove side, he’ll have to take time to reposition his feet before throwing the ball.

Aaannnd…

If the outfielder is going away from the base the runner wants to take – like a centerfielder going into right-center gap while the runner heads for third – the throw will be weak and late, but if the centerfielder is fielding the ball in the left-center gap, the throw will be quick and strong because he’s already headed toward third base.

This is the kind of detail that wins – and in many cases, loses – ball games.

Conclusion…sort of

I could go on forever and it probably already feels like I have even though we haven’t talked about situational hitting or two-strike hitting or the wild pitch thrown in the 10th inning which the Phillies catcher couldn’t block because he was down on one knee (I warned you about that) or the times the shift backfired, but this gives you some things to watch for and the cool – or possibly depressing – thing about baseball is this never ends and there’s always more to learn and if you ever think you know it all, that’s a sure sign you don’t.

Enjoy tonight’s game and go Phillies.