I find that with younger baseball players pop flies are something that can get base runners into a lot of trouble. I try to coach young baseball players to commit to running from one base to another, this means run without hesitation. However, fly balls introduce hesitation and decision into base running because if the ball is caught the player must go back (i.e. tag up) at their original base and often the base coach yelling “Back” isn’t helpful. With this post, I’ll cover how this can work in a game and then I’ll cover how to get the athlete there.
When an athlete is on base, usually they’ll take a step then one to two shuffles as their lead. With the right athlete, the right situation, and the right pitcher it may be greater. To be successful at reaching the next base, they need to be very purposeful about running to it – as opposed to standing there and watching the play develop, every tenth of a second counts. This means they need to run when the ball is hit, especially if it is a forced out situation. There are exceptions if this is not the situation.
Now, if the ball is a fly ball, the athlete should run about halfway to the next base and pause to see what happens. If the ball is caught, the athlete needs to go back to the original base and tag up before deciding whether to advance. If the ball is not caught, then the athlete needs to move fast to the next base – especially in a forced out situation.
How to train that? I take two steps to train this. First, I like to teach the athletes how to stop suddenly. Then I teach them either how to change directions (and come back) or how to resume their sprint.
To stop suddenly, I teach my athletes to chop their steps and drop their hips. Essentially they are sitting into the stop. This sounds good in theory, but athletes have to practice it to get better.
We do our sprints at the end of baseball practice. We do sprints from a standing start to emphasize mechanics, sprints from a lead so that we can integrate our crossover step, and we do sprints to reinforce what to do during a fly ball situation.
When training the fly ball situation, I’ll have them take off for their sprint. I’ll then call out “Stop!” and then either “Back!” or “Keep going!” This then gets reinforced when we’re training baserunning, fielding, and pickoff situations during practices.
