Andrew McCutchen Makes a Modern Baserunning Gaffe
It’s not very often you see Andrew McCutchen making a mistake, but it happened yesterday in Pittsburgh’s 1-0 loss to the Tigers. A tip of the hat to Pirates broadcasters Tim Neverett and Bob Walk for pointing out this interesting wrinkle.
It was the Pirates’ half of the fourth inning, with the game tied 0-0 and Alfredo Simon on the mound for the Tigers. With two outs and nobody on, McCutchen hit a single (the Pirates’ first hit of the game) and stood on first with Neil Walker at the plate.
Walker hit a bloop single to right field. It dropped just in front of J.D. Martinez:
What the baserunner on first, in this case McCutchen, has done since the dawn of time in this instance is go to second — and go to third only if the outfielder terribly misplays the ball. Here is McCutchen at second, monitoring Martinez to see if he misplays the ball. (He doesn’t.)
The modern(ish) wrinkle here is that the Tigers were shifting against Walker. Here is their formation before the pitch (click to embiggen):
And here is what their defense looked like the moment McCutchen was rounding second. Martinez is throwing in the ball from right, and arrows are pointing at Tigers, while McCutchen is in the tiny circle:
So here’s McCutchen’s mistake: he should not be looking at Martinez, because it almost doesn’t matter how Martinez plays this ball. What’s important is that Detroit’s shift has left third base vacated. Third basemen Nick Castellanos (underneath top arrow) is near McCutchen at second base, and also facing Martinez. Castellanos is a few steps closer to third, but that doesn’t matter: he would need to turn around, beat McCutchen in a footrace, turn back towards the field (only now can the relay man deliver the throw), see and catch the ball, and finally apply the tag. Simon (underneath second arrow) is a bit closer to third base, but is also faced towards right field, and I’d take McCutchen in the race to apply the tag.
It seems like the only Tiger aware of the danger is catcher James McCann, playing in career game #13, who is moving up the third-base line while facing right field. Despite his gear, he would have been the only Tiger to have a shot at catching McCutchen. Nice.
Keep in mind, McCutchen has a great chance to beat the Tigers to third after he has decelerated to a stop, and then turned around. With a more aggressive pre-pitch strategy, I think third base could easily have been his.
We always wonder what factors could lead to the shift’s natural death — or at least a factor that would start the frequency of the shift trending downward. Perhaps enough baserunners going from first to third on well-played bloop singles would do the trick.
Miles Wray contributes sports commentary to McSweeney's Internet Tendency, Ploughshares, The Classical and Hardwood Paroxysm. Follow him on Twitter @mileswray or email him here.
What happened to not watching the ball and instead picking up the third base coach? Or is that just something they teach in little league and disregard later?
If McCutchen were looking toward third, he would’ve noticed this opportunity. What good is a third base coach if no one pays attention to him?
So this is the opposite of the heads-up Mookie Betts double steal.
We should expect two things should happen: 1) baserunning coaches should be teaching runners to keep in mind the unoccupied 3B during shifts, 2) fielding coaches should be teaching pitchers to immediately head to 3B once the ball is in play on a shift.
Pitchers tend to forget to become fielders an awful lot, and aren’t very good fielders anyway. So I expect to see a lot more of these taking-an-extra-base-because-of-the-shift plays.
Well, he should have been heading to backup third base anyway. That has been taught for decades. I’d assume if he were on his way to back up third, he’d notice it was unoccupied and, you know, occupy it.
Yeah, obviously, that’s his role on that play.
But I was trying to say that coaches should be *emphasizing* this situation both to runners and pitchers. No idea if that’s actually been happening.
I think Carson should do an article the next time McCutchen makes a post-modern baserunning gaffe.
I think I saw Charlie Blackmon make this same mistake in the 1st inning of last night’s game when the Giants shifted against Carlos Gonzalez.
MLB has been kicking around the idea of banning the shift. Wouldn’t it be nice to see it work itself out naturally, or even better, lead to more exciting plays on the basepaths?
That would be such a terrible idea, considering there aren’t any existing rules about where any of the fielders need to play except for pitcher and catcher. I think Manfred backtracked on those comments anyway.
There are definitely ways to take advantage of the shift (bunting and baserunning), but I don’t think either are used enough. I think we’ll see it on the baserunning side more.
Manfred says he’s not going to do that now.
That’s what I like to hear, N8*K.
Cool article Miles. It’s the little things like this that bring me back to FG every day.
Thanks, ‘fest!
And to don my editor’s cap for a moment, the JD Martinez link goes to JD Martin, hopefully not the second coming of Johan Santa
The JD Martin link has been around for a long time. And to be fair, I think Johan Santa is probably more famous in these electronic pages now than Santana.
probably, I hadn’t noticed it before. and yeah, the legend of Johan Santa has reached daring heights in this corner of the world wide web.
Just a quick note. The player under the top arrow is likely Jose Iglesias, not Castellanos. The Tigers, when them impose a shift, move the Third Baseman to short right field and keep the Shortstop near his natural position. Iglesias is faster and more adept in the field than Castellanos and would have a better chance making the play at third. However, still well worth what little risk there is for McCutchen to try to move up.
I write only to notify your editor that “embiggen” is not a real word and that its presence here taints an otherwise perfectly cromulent article.
Are you new here? Embiggen has been used by the authors here (i.e. Fangraphs) for quite some time, it’s sort of the thing around these electronic pages.
Whooosh
To be fair to McCutchen, the expected runs gained by advancing to third in that situation are 0.0411 runs, while the runs lost by making an out at third are 0.3985 (http://www.baseballprospectus.com/sortable/index.php?cid=1657937). This makes the break even success rate ~90.7%. This is considering Walker doesn’t advance to second on a throw and no errors are committed on a throw.
So, while it’s probably sub-optimal for him to not take the base, it’s not a big loss. Not trying to be a jerk, but I often succeed in that endeavor without trying, so here we are.
great point, though id argue that the break even point in terms of win probability could be significantly lower in a low run scoring environment, which could potentially be the case for april baseball in PNC and 11 outs already used up
I agree that win probability is a better measure, so here it is (thanks to http://gregstoll.dyndns.org/~gregstoll/baseball/stats.php for the numbers):
Bottom 4th, Men on 1/2, 2 out, tie game: Home Team WP 57.896%
Bottom 4th, Men on 1/3, 2 out, tie game: Home Team WP 58.654%
Top 5th, None on, None out, tie game: Home Team WP 52.398%
So the break even point based on WPA is ~87.9%. As expected, a lower break even point, but only by a couple of percentage points. I think you could definitely bump it down a little lower based on cold weather baseball.
Like I said, based on the circumstances, probably should have taken the base, but it doesn’t gain him all that much, less than 0.01 WPA.
Amazing with the abundance of shifts implemented today in MLB, that neither the offense nor defense were prepared for this situation. It seems the defense should either deploy the pitcher or LF to 3B on a hit to RF with a man on. It also seems like the offense would know that with a man on first, two outs and a LH shift in place the runner should be running on contact to 3B, looking at the coach for instructions.
If the shift is here to stay then, there need to be automatic responses to certain situations.
Elkabong,
I’m not trying to be a jerk, but I probably am.
The only question you have to answer is…Is a runner on 3rd with 2 outs more likely to score than a runner on 2nd with 2 outs?
Of course… a wild pitch or passed ball; An infield error; A RH pitcher is more distracted with a runner on third; The runner on first can steal 2nd easier with a man on 3rd; A Balk, etc. He was not going to be thrown out at 3rd because there was no one there to catch it.
And let’s not forget, it was 0-0 at the time and the score ended up being 1-0. So show me again the % that tells us going from 2nd to 3rd doesn’t mean much and I’ll say the guy spouting that line probably never played baseball in his life, but loves his sabrmetrics. You can show me that the win expectancy probably would have only gone up by a couple %’s by moving up to 3rd, but I can tell it would have added a whole lot of pressure on a pitcher that didn’t face very much during that game.
Okay, doesn’t “old school” baseball knowledge say not to make the first or last out of the inning at third? Furthermore, those numbers I cited were based on data from the 2014 season. That extra 0.0411 runs is probably due to those infield errors, wild pitches, and passed balls.
There were 1696 wild pitches last year and 342 passed balls. Using Baseball Savant data, a typical pitchers throws about 9.4% of his pitches with a runner on third. There were roughly 750,000 pitches thrown in the MLB last year, so roughly 66,000 would be thrown with a man on third. Let’s assume 100% of all wild pitches and passed balls occurred with a man on third, which is crazy conservative. This equates to
*drum roll*
3% of all pitches, or approximately 0.03 runs. This assumes that pitchers only throw wild pitches or passed balls with a runner on third, which, as stated previously, is comically conservative.
I’m not saying he shouldn’t have taken the base, he most probably should have. All I’m saying is that a guy with McCutchen’s speed is going to score from second on any non-out with two outs in the inning. It’s nice that the numbers actually back up the “conventional” wisdom of not making the last out of the inning at third.
A very similar situation occurred in the first inning of the Rockies / Giants game last night. Rockies are at bat, Blackmon on first with Cargo up. Hit and run, grounder to the right side of the infield, fielded by the SS because of the shift. If Blackmon had rounded second, he’d be in a foot race with the third basemen who’d also have to field the throw. http://cl.ly/image/1D161v1g2O12 http://cl.ly/image/2c3z14140102
Baserunning Gaffe?? That’s not a baserunning gaffe. I’ll show you a baserunning gaffe! -Robinson Cano
Travis Snider did the same thing last year.
I’m guessing if McCutchen takes third, the catcher, pitcher, and SS all instinctively flock to third base. Then it’s a foot race to home.
Great article! Now I’d like to see a baserunning giraffe, if you please.
Its not just a McCutchen gaffe. I believe the pitcher is supposed to be backing up 3b. So its a fault of the pitcher as well.