The Hit and Run

So a while back I watched the Braves play the Phillies and the MLB channel was doing one of those “Clubhouse Edition” broadcasts where they have ex-players sit around and watch a game and talk off the top of their heads and in this case the players were CC Sabathia, Cliff Floyd and Mike Lowell.

This, by the way, is a great way to watch a ballgame as long as the networks let the ex-pros speak their minds because if they just want someone to kiss MLB’s ass they already have plenty of media members ready and willing to pucker up. Plus guys who never played baseball seem to think inside information is some totally irrelevant story about how a player met his wife or what he named his dog or how his parents are his biggest fans and guys who actually played the game might tell you how playing too many defensive positions can lead to a hitting slump.

But before we get to that…

The difference between baseball and football

Watch “Hard Knocks” – the documentary series on NFL training camps – and you’ll see coaches screaming at players and acting like General Patton in a bad mood and demanding perfection and a guy will drop a couple passes in practice and start wondering where he’s going to play next because after just a couple mistakes he might not make the team.  

Baseball is different because the coaches understand just how much failure the game involves – a Hall of Fame hitter will still fail 70 percent of the time – so baseball coaches spend a lot of time building up a player’s confidence and urging him to ride out the bad streaks and not to get too down on himself and one of the ex-pros watching the Braves-Phillies game pointed out that if you were at least playing good defense you might feel like you were still helping the team.

In Real Baseball a hit prevented is worth the same as a hit; a run prevented is worth the same as driving in a run, so you might take an 0-fer, but still feel OK because you made a great catch and threw a runner out at the plate.

But if your team is asking you to play three or four positions, you’re probably mediocre at all of them (and there were some pretty horrible plays in the game) so you’ll put more pressure on yourself to hit and might start swinging for the fences or hacking at pitches you can’t handle, which can lead to slumps.

Bad defense can lead to bad offense, a revelation which is one of the many reasons people who never played the game ought to spend at least some time listening to the people who have.

And that gets us to…

Putting pressure on the defense

Going into the bottom of the eighth inning it was 4-3 Braves and they brought in pitcher A.J. Minter and he got two outs on three pitches and then gave up a single.

On a 2-1 pitch the Phillies put the runner in motion and that made the second baseman cover second base, so when Yairo Munoz hit a weak flare to the right side of the infield, the second baseman had to change direction to get back to the ball and didn’t get there in time and Munoz was safe and the next batter hit a 3-run homer and the Phillies went on to win.

Timeout for an explanation of hit and run counts

In a hit-and-run you want the batter to make contact because if the runner was fast enough to steal the base on his own you’d probably do that instead, so you wait for a count where you think the batter is likely to get a fastball. (Think 2-0, 2-1, 3-0, 3-1 and depending on the situation, maybe 3-2.)

Write this down unless you don’t have a pencil and in that case, go straight to a tattoo parlor and get this inked on your forehead (in reverse, so you can read it in a mirror every morning) because this explains an awful lot about baseball:

Fastballs are easier to throw for a strike because they’re relatively straight, but fastballs are easier to hit because they’re relatively straight.

(Man, I hope you got a forehead like Young Frankenstein and here’s a clip just in case you need a break from all this baseball talk or forgot how funny that movie was.)

OK, just watched that clip and these days somebody might find it politically incorrect (only because it is) but Madeline Kahn is freaking hilarious and if you watch it, enjoy the lightning-quick emotional changes she goes through when Peter Boyle gets up to leave.

Anyway…

There are exceptions to everything (if a pitcher likes to throw first-pitch fastballs, that can become a good hit-and-run count), but 2-0 and 2-1 are often hit-and-run counts because the pitcher needs to throw a strike, but generally speaking you don’t want to do it if the pitcher is  3-0 or 3-1 since the pitcher is just one pitch away from walking the hitter.

There are exceptions to everything, which is a huge pain in the ass

So a very smart ballplayer stole second base on a 3-0 count and I asked him why (the pitcher was one pitch away from walking the batter, so you’d think a runner might want to stay at first base until that happened), but the smart ballplayer said that particular pitcher had very good control and even if he was 3-0, it wasn’t a sure deal he would walk the batter

But…the pitcher in question usually slowed down his 3-0 delivery to make sure he threw a strike, so in that particular situation 3-0 was a good count to run on and the smart ballplayer who stole second scored on a single and his team won by a single run, so if he hadn’t run in that unusual count his team might not have won.

Back to the Phillies and Braves

The ex-pros talked about the importance of putting pressure on the defense with plays like stolen bases and hit and runs and maybe even bunts because it forces defenders to move and pitchers to speed up deliveries and if you never ever do any of those things, defenders get to stand exactly where they want and pitchers can focus on the batter and take forever to deliver a pitch.

All of which leads to a story about conducting a hit and run and you’re gonna thank me for this if you ever get asked to do one.  

How to conduct a Hit-and-Run

So Jason Kendall was rehabbing with some minor leaguers and working on hit-and-runs when one of them asked him:

“Mr. Kendall, why are you hitting so many ground balls to the right side?”

To which Jason answered:

“First of all, I’m not Mr. Kendall, I’m your teammate Jason, and second of all, what the hell are they teaching you guys down here?”

Now here’s something you can watch for when you’re at a game and feel free to point it out to everyone around you which will irritate the living shit out of them and I know this from personal experience.

With a runner on first base, before every pitch the two middle infielders will look at each other, shield their mouths with their gloves so the batter can’t see them and whoever is deciding which one of them will cover second base if the runner on first base takes off, will show an open mouth for “you” (as in “you” are covering second base) or a closed mouth for “me” (as in “me” are covering second base…and, yes the grammar in baseball is absolutely appalling) and if you wonder how they came up with that system, try saying “me” and “you” and see what shape your mouth makes.

They go through all this Secret Squirrel Shit so the batter doesn’t know who’s covering second base because when the runner takes off, that side of the infield will be wide open.

But according to Jason 90 percent of the time the middle infielder covering second base will be the infielder on the opposite-field side of the hitter (second baseman for righties and shortstop for lefties) and if all else fails, just assume the infielder standing closest to second base will be the guy covering because Albert Einstein didn’t make it past Double A which is why he had to quit baseball and settle for explaining How the Universe Works.

Theoretically…

The pitch being thrown should dictate who covers second base because if it’s off-speed the pull-side infielder should stay put and if it’s a fastball the odds increase it will be hit to the opposite field.

Anyway…

When the runner on first base takes off with a right-handed hitter at the plate, most of the time the right side will be wide open and if the batter has learned to hit a groundball to the opposite field, he can hit a 42-hopper with an exit velocity that wouldn’t get you a ticket in a school zone and still pick up a base hit.

Jason explained that being able to hit a groundball to the opposite field was a handy skill to have in a lot of situations – especially if you’re left-handed and they play an infield shift with 11 infielders and a couple bat boys on the pull side of the field – and working on that skill might save your career.

So what have we learned today?

When analytics first became a thing any ballplayer or coach or manager or reporter or parking lot attendant who didn’t say it was the greatest thing ever had a chance to lose their jobs, but even though it’s a small sample size (the games I’ve managed to watch without falling asleep) now that we’ve had a decade or so to see the results of analytics, I seem to hear more announcers question some of the conclusions the numbers guys reached and for my money, it can’t come a moment too soon.

Also…

Madeline Kahn was a genius.