What I learned from watching the 2016 baseball playoffs (part 1)

    The MLB Post-Season is such a great time for baseball fans, and especially coaches. Everyone is focused on the games and the presentations by the TV networks is outstanding - every play gets special, slo-motion replays and there are extra microphones around the park that give you so much more insight into what's happening in the game. Twitter is also alive with various coaches tweeting out videos about certain plays or giving their perspectives. The coverage of post-season baseball just goes so far beyond what you would normally get from regular season games.
    I learned a lot from watching this year's post season games and I just wanted to share some of the lessons I learned. I would love to hear what you all learned as well, so feel free to share, add on to what I've written or contradict some of what I perceived. After writing this, I realized that I had a lot to write about these various plays, so I have broken this post up into several different parts which I will publish over the next few weeks. One disclaimer - I do not claim to know everything and the views written below are simply my perception of what's happening on the field at this point in my life. Who knows, my ideas about these various plays may change over time and several years from now, I might feel that I was way off base with the below. Please keep that in mind and feel free to contact me with your thoughts. Here's part 1! 

Lesson #1 - Playing the ball on the run -
There were two players that really emphasized this for me - Javy Baez, the Cubs' 2nd baseman, and Brandon Crawford, the Giants' shortstop. I had never really considered playing balls on the run, outside of certain slow-roller do-or-die situations, but these players played even some of the most routine grounders on the run. Just to quickly explain for the non-baseball audience what this means - I'm talking about the play where on a ground ball (either slow roller or a regular ball), the player would charge the ball and play them on their glove side while on the run. The player can then break down and make the throw from a normal position or continue to throw on the run. 
​    An example of this actually happened where Crawford threw out, guess who, Javy Baez!
See video of this play here. 
     Now, looking at this play, when Crawford made the out, you can see that the throw beat Baez easily, so why did Crawford play it on the run? If you follow the string of tweets after that tweet by Kai, you'll see some possible reasons - guys are fast and fielding it off to the side actually allows you to be more athletic against the ball. What does that mean?            
     Crawford was able more easily able to pick out the hop that he wanted on this ball by playing it on the run. He may have also just felt more comfortable athletically by playing it on the run or thought that he needed to be quick to the ball. One of these reasons introduces another concept of picking your hop. It can definitely be more complicated than this, but there are several different hops that you can get on a ground-ball - 
   a short hop - meaning that you field the ball immediately after it bounces off the ground.
   an in-between hop - meaning that you get the ball sometime after it bounces and it is now    rising up when you field it.
   a long hop - the ball has long since hopped and is now at its highest point or beginning to      go downward. 
   In my opinion, the easiest hop to field is the short hop. The ball has has just bounced and has had little opportunity to spin before it arrives in your glove. I would encourage fielders to attack the ball to get the short-hop where-ever possible. It's tough to tell on the play above whether Crawford gets the short hop or not, but he definitely gets the short hop or a very slightly in between hop.    
   Seeing Baez and Crawford do this move to various opponents definitely planted a seed in my mind to work with this more with players during the offseason. There are also different variations of this play, you do not necessarily need to field on the run and then throw on the run. If you know that you have time, you can field the ball on the run and then do two quick shuffle steps to set yourself, cut down the distance and then make the throw. In the play in the twitter video, Crawford beats Javy by several steps so he definitely didn't need to throw it on the run but probably didn't have a ton of time to take extra steps to make the throw. If it was a slow runner and he did have time, you would probably see him come out of this by taking several shuffles towards 1B after fielding the ball to make a shorter, controlled throw to 1B. 
    That being said, there are several ways to field and get rid of the ball coming out of a running play. 

• Field the ball on the run then shuffle throw - a fielder can use this movement pattern, referenced above, when he/she fields the ball and realizes that there is time to make the throw and still beat the runner. Since the fielder has time, he/she can field the ball on the run and then take several shuffles towards their target before throwing. The benefit of doing this is that this movement will cut down the distance to first base and allow the fielder to set his/her feet before making the throw. A good two shuffles can possibly cut off 6-10 feet on a throw, which on a 90-100 foot or less throw is significant. 
• Field the ball on the run and then throw on the run - the most common of the fielding on the run varieties. In this situation, the fielder fields the ball on the run off of his/her left side (if playing anywhere but 1B) and then continues to make the throw on the run. The key mechanical points on the footwork, based on my observations, is that no matter what, the throw must come off the right foot as opposed to your left foot. Now, how do they get to the right foot? What I have typically observed is that the fielder will field the ball on his/her left side as the right foot is about to plant. The fielder then steps forward with his/her left foot, then onto the right again at which point the fielder throws. So, I see the most efficient movement as a 4 step process - 1) Fielder fields the ball 2) At almost the same time as step 1, fielder plants right foot 3) fielder plants left foot and 4) fielder plants right foot and makes the throw. 
• Field the ball with two hands on your right side and then throw on next step - you'll use this movement when you have little or no time to make the play at 1B. It's nearly a do-or-die type moment on a slow roller. How it works is that you field the ball while your left foot is planting on the right side of your body with two hands (for all other plays above, you field with 1 hand). You then exchange and make the throw immediately as/while your right foot is planting. So this is basically a two step process - 1) Field the ball with two hands while your left foot is planted and 2) exchange and throw while right foot plants.

     In any case where you are throwing on the run (the last two points above, not the shuffle step through), your arm angle while throwing is also important. While throwing on the run, you are not going to be able to throw in a straight over-top motion, you're going to have to adjust your arm angle down to an at least three quarters arm angle. ​An example of this arm angle is pictured above - this angle is pretty extreme, but the point is that you will not be throwing straight over the top while you throw on the run. Also notice the tilt of the player's shoulders - his shoulders are not level but are rather tilted at an angle. Incorporate throwing at different arm angles into your practices - this is easily incorporable into your daily throwing routine that usually begins everyone's practices. 

Let me know what you think or if you know of any other coaching points related to throwing on the run. I'd love to hear your input. I'll also be posting several other lessons I learned from the playoffs in upcoming posts, so keep an eye out for them here!

​-- Tom

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