It Doesn’t Add Payroll to Play Fundamentally Sound Baseball

8-26-24 – By Gary Morgan – @garymo2007 on Twitter

Don’t these guys practice? Mistakes happen of course, but the same one two or three times in one game, by the same guys?

I mean, as a Pirates fan, you know there is some crap you have to deal with, but does throwing to the wrong base need to be one of those things?

Seems to me a league minimum player should probably know not to break for third base on a ground ball to the third base side of short stop.

More than anything, it seems to me if I wanted to get away with spending as little as possible, I might make sure I have a coach that is going to make sure all the free stuff is happening.

Mistakes happen. The game picks up speed, and players don’t have the benefit of slowing the game down to the microsecond before making a play like we do before we hammer them, but fundamentals, the building blocks of any sport, that stuff is supposed to be second nature, what the hell happened to that? In Pittsburgh to be sure, but around the league, what happened to clean, smart baseball?

You can’t coach every outfielder into having an 80 grade arm, but you can coach every outfielder to know diving for a baseball with two outs and a runner at first needs to be a better than 75% bet.

You can teach every outfielder once the ball comes to you there is never a benefit to that ball staying in your hand. Make a decision on where the ball is going before you catch it and come up firing.

You can teach your infielders to be in specific spots to receive a cutoff throw based on where baserunners are and how many outs there are. Understand that risky double play when you’re up 8 isn’t worth it, just take the out at first. If a second baseman has to retreat to right field for a ball, the first baseman should have his foot on the OF side of 1B ready to receive the throw.

You know, like everything we learned through almost 150 years of playing the sport professionally in this country and suddenly we’re like grateful when a guy backs up a play or hits the cutoff man, or receives a throw on the bag instead of 2 feet in front of it on a tag play. This stuff all used to be “well duh” stuff, crap we were taught in little league we all claim anyway, I’d say more like Pony League, but point taken.

What the hell has happened to the single cheapest thing you can do on a baseball field? Why is next to nobody recognizing with how hard it is to win, you can give yourself a much better chance by simply paying more attention to detail than your opposition.

Next time you watch a game, and this will really work better at the ballpark as opposed to TV, but as much as you can, try. Pay particular attention to Isiah Kiner-Falefa. Watch what he does every time a ball is hit in play.

He has a responsibility on every ball hit anywhere in the field. It’s repeatable. Ground ball to left while he’s playing second base, he covers second. Basic, right? More runners and out scenarios, they all have something he’s supposed to do.

Everyone on the field does, but I’m asking you to watch him because he’s the only one you’ll see ALWAYS do these little things. Every play he has a purpose. He doesn’t just float to an area, he purposefully beelines it for the spot that position and scenario require.

Ke’Bryan Hayes is good at this too, but he’s injured, and truly, there’s less opportunity to see what I’m talking about with a 3B.

Now, IKF is a Gold Glove winner. I don’t expect every player on the field to do what he does, or be capable of it. The positioning away from the ball, making good throw decisions, knowing when to take the extra base, hustling, all that stuff, that needs to be demanded and instructed.

Especially when you want to maximize your talent.

Fundamentals are the completely unnoticed footholds in a team game that very often accentuates the individual. Knowing where your teammates will be and what everyone’s responsibility is can help make the success rate go up. It can keep 5 run innings from blooming, by accepting and taking the outs that are given.

It helps thwart panic when things start rolling down hill and feeling out of control. Your fundamentals are meant to help you reset and not rely on your mind in the moment as much as muscle memory.

You could play this game for 20 years and still see something you’ve never encountered in any given game, so of course you can’t prepare your way out of ever being caught off guard, but you sure can make the routine as close to automatic as possible.

A major league baseball staff shouldn’t have to teach fundamentals, but they should enforce them. Even if you can hit the ball 470 feet. Even if everyone knows you’re slow. Even if everyone knows you’ve had a back problem.

You practice them to reinforce that they’re important here too, they aren’t just crap you had to do to get here.

It’s not just defense either. Most reasonable people understand the three true outcomes in baseball, and most of us know the gravitation toward them has hurt the game. It’s created an all or nothing offensive attack night after night. It’s created pitchers who miss bats for strikeouts or walks, but that’s like all there is.

There are far more strikeouts and walks in today’s game, and that means fewer opportunities to play defense and even fewer hours put into working to be hard to play defensively.

You’d like to think a team down 2 in the 7th would understand getting a guy on and working him around the bases by just making contact and hitting the ball in the right direction is a perfectly acceptable way to come back in a game.

This whole thing probably comes across as an old man yelling at clouds, if so, guilty. I know the game has changed, I just think there’s no reason that playing the game in a practiced and smart fashion should ever go out of style, in fact, if you’re a team that’s never going to be in the top 15 payroll mix, it seems to me you can’t afford not to.

Maybe this coaching staff can’t do the job.

Maybe they just don’t emphasize it.

Maybe I don’t care, I just want to see athletes who look and act like every play matters and when the opposition gives them an out, the scoreboard will soon show they’ve taken it.

I’d like to see coaches who demand it.

Mostly because I just want to see baseball played where errors are a physical mistake as opposed to an unpracticed and preventable looking flood gate opener.

If you build a team on pitching and don’t try to make sure you get them outs when they pitch them, you probably don’t know what you’re doing.