One of the most notable changes in baseball over the last few years has been the increased emphasis on defensive positioning. The rise of data has helped coaches identify where the ball is likely going to go before it goes there, and teams have put a lot of effort into making sure they have a defender in the right place at the right time.
Which is why the Rangers first run against David Price yesterday was a little jarring. You can watch the play, which resulted in a Delino Deshields RBI single, in the highlight below.
Ryan Goins — one of the best defensive second baseman in baseball, it should be said — is left standing helplessly near the second base bag as the ball hit by Deshields rolls into the outfield, right past the area where a second baseman is normally positioned. Here’s an image of his position as the ball passed by him.
According to John Lott of the National Post, the Blue Jays were running a “back-pick” on this play, in which Goins would sneak over to the second base bag after the pitch was delivered in order to receive a throw down from catcher Russell Martin, hoping to catch the runner — Rougned Odor, in this case — off the bag for an out. And there is some merit to trying to take advantage of Odor’s baserunning, because in his brief Major League career, he’s been pretty terrible at it.
You Aren't a FanGraphs Member
It looks like you aren't yet a FanGraphs Member (or aren't logged in). We aren't mad, just disappointed.
We get it. You want to read this article. But before we let you get back to it, we'd like to point out a few of the good reasons why you should become a Member.
1. Ad Free viewing! We won't bug you with this ad, or any other.
2. Unlimited articles! Non-Members only get to read 10 free articles a month. Members never get cut off.
3. Dark mode and Classic mode!
4. Custom player page dashboards! Choose the player cards you want, in the order you want them.
5. One-click data exports! Export our projections and leaderboards for your personal projects.
6. Remove the photos on the home page! (Honestly, this doesn't sound so great to us, but some people wanted it, and we like to give our Members what they want.)
7. Even more Steamer projections! We have handedness, percentile, and context neutral projections available for Members only.
8. Get FanGraphs Walk-Off, a customized year end review! Find out exactly how you used FanGraphs this year, and how that compares to other Members. Don't be a victim of FOMO.
9. A weekly mailbag column, exclusively for Members.
10. Help support FanGraphs and our entire staff! Our Members provide us with critical resources to improve the site and deliver new features!
We hope you'll consider a Membership today, for yourself or as a gift! And we realize this has been an awfully long sales pitch, so we've also removed all the other ads in this article. We didn't want to overdo it.
Read the rest at Just A Bit Outside.
AS baseball players
I work for my project školskiâ and formed a survey to design a solution to meet these head injuries in baseball sport. If a baseball player can take this survey, it would be great.
In regards to Odor’s poor baserunning: his poor SB success rate doesn’t really tell us whether he’s a good pickoff candidate. His SB numbers just indicate he doesn’t know when it’s a good idea to take off. That information isn’t helpful here. More relevant are his UBR numbers, which have been excellent both this year and last.
But still, maybe last night Odor was taking a too-large lead or not paying attention to Goins’ location. It was an odd time to call a rare play, so you figure there had to have been something behind it.
the jays have had a pretty phenomenal year in terms of baserunning this year, both offensively where they’ve been one of the best baserunning teams in baseball despite not being all that fast, and defensively where both martin and navarro have had career or near career years in throwing out baserunners.
i have no idea how to analyze this but i’m convinced the jays’ analytics guys have figured something out here.
Seems to me you’d want a ‘swing-and-miss’ in order to freeze the runner for that one instant.
Moving a middle infielder out of position on a pitch you intend to throw for a strike doesn’t seem like it would ever be a good idea to me no matter how bad the baserunner. Almost seemed to me like Price wasn’t even aware the play was on. Wouldn’t he want to throw maybe a high fastball or breaking pitch down and in — something more likely to be hit in the air or pulled if the hitter did make contact? Either way I’d make sure the pitch was out of the zone or not run that play at all. As I see it, either Price didn’t get the sign or the whole play was just a bad idea to start with, not a good idea gone wrong.
#6Org
Goins’ positioning has been notably poor in this game — or is it his range? I can’t remember seeing this many ground balls sneak by him in the past.