All Sends Are Good
A primer on one of my radical baseball theories
Welcome! I know I’ve repeated this a few times, but my book is out and available here. It’s full of stories about guys like Richard Hidalgo, Omir Santos, and Kevin Plawecki — you’ll enjoy it.
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I was of two minds way back when MLB announced that it would ban infield shifts. I was torn between a desire not to over-regulate that which had historically been left alone and a hope that the new rules would bring back seeing-eye singles up the middle and line-drive base hits to right and the like. But I also had another bone to pick with the change: I had developed an out-of-the-box idea for beating the shift, and after the new rule, my theory was useless.
Here’s how it works. Let’s say you’re a lefty, and the defense is shifting against you when you come to bat. What do you do?
You square to bunt.
No element of surprise, no running up, no hint of secrecy: you step into the box and immediately square to bunt. You give yourself up. Heck, maybe you even point down the third-base line: “I’m going to put it right there!”
So what does the defense do? They probably move the third baseman in on the grass down the line: they can’t just ignore that you’re bunting. So then you’re free to swing away with basically the entire left side of the infield open — or, if they don’t bring the third baseman in, you go ahead and put down the bunt. Maybe it doesn’t work, but after a few at-bats where you bunt down the third-base line each time, the defense knows you’re serious, and has no choice but to start bringing the third baseman in, and then that left side opens right back up. It’s not a perfect system — the only perfect system is to learn how to hit to all fields, which isn’t easy — but it at least frees up a big chunk of the field and helps neutralize the shift’s dastardly depressive impact on batting average. Would it work in practice? Who knows?
Anyway, they banned the shift and my first radical theory was instantly useless. So here’s my second one:
Send him.
No matter the situation, no matter the runner, no matter the arm — just send him. Send him home from third. All sends are good.
Okay — not literally. If you’ve got Wilson Ramos on third and the batter hits a pop-up too short, then yeah, don’t send him. But in general, third-base coaches should adopt a posture of radical aggression, and not be afraid to send runners home even when a safe call looks far from certain.
I bring this up, of course, after Tyrone Taylor was thrown out at the plate by Ramón Laureano in the Mets’ series finale loss to the Braves. Taylor got a slow start from second; Laureano has one of the best outfield arms in the Majors; it wasn’t a particularly difficult throw; there were no outs, and the top of the order was coming up. Sure enough, Taylor was thrown out, and the inning ended with the Mets still scoreless.
But consider a few things.
It took a perfect throw from one of the best outfield arms in the league to get Taylor at the plate. Perfect throws are hard to make.
Even with the perfect throw, on replay it’s hard to say whether Taylor was actually out, and he could easily have been called safe.
After Taylor was thrown out at the plate, Francisco Lindor struck out, Jose Iglesias hit a fly ball that might not have been deep enough to bring Taylor home from third (to Laureano, nonetheless), and Brandon Nimmo grounded out to lead off the following inning.
In other words, that run might well not have scored even if Taylor had held up at third — and taking the turn and trying for the plate might have given the Mets their best chance at scoring. In other other words, it was a good send, regardless of how it worked out.
Just think about how often the scene plays out: A batter hits a fly ball with a runner on third (or a single with a runner on second), the runner starts to come home but thinks better of it and retreats back to third, the outfielder uncorks a rocket of a throw … and the throw comes in 20 feet over the catcher’s head, or bounces up off his glove, or rolls in on five or six bounces, or goes up the third-base line into no-man’s land. Or is even a few feet off, far enough to prevent the catcher from making a smooth, quick tag and likely giving the runner time to score — but it doesn’t matter, because the runner stayed put.
There’s also the wrinkle of the new plate-blocking rules: any time a runner tries to score, there’s a chance that the catcher will mess up, illegally blocking the plate and handing the opposing team a run.
All things considered, a close play at the plate is a pretty decent chance to score. The outfielder can make a bad throw, the catcher can drop the ball, or everything can go fine for the defense and the runner can still beat the tag. All too often, runners hold up at third, only later realizing that a sprint down the third-base line represented the best scoring chance they were going to get, and they failed to take advantage. Scoring chances are rare, and you’ve got to take them as they come. Long story short: all sends are good.