In youth baseball, once athletes are able to steal bases often the baserunning will beat defense until the bases are 90 feet apart. This means that this is an important aspect of a youth baseball team’s offense. This all starts when the baseball player gets to first base.
Once an athlete gets to first base, their job is to get to the next base. We want them looking, or making, opportunities to get to second base or beyond. This starts with being aware of the situation on the field. Has an overthrow been made to another base? Has the ball been dropped? Is the pitcher walking around and throwing the ball in the air to himself? We want the baserunner paying attention for these kinds of opportunities and taking advantage of them.
The athlete also needs to be physically ready to get to the next base. This begins by taking a step off the base and then a shuffle. The athlete should be facing inside, feet hip width apart, weight on the balls of their feet, hips pushed back and hands ready. From this position they can sprint to the base or move backwards on a pickoff move.
We want the athlete watching the pitcher. If the pitcher steps back, this signals a pickoff move and we need to come back to first base. On the other hand, if the pitcher commits to the pitch then this is a great time to make the move for first base because the pitcher cannot stop mid pitch and try to throw the runner out – so running during the pitch is a great time to steal, it maximizes the mount of time available to the runner and might even create a bad pith which could get us an extra base during the steal.
Now this changes when the bases get to 90 feet, this becomes much more difficult. It’s no longer a given that baserunning will beat defense. This has several implications:
- We have to be ready to take advantage of mistakes, like an overthrow.
- We have to create opportunities to steal by taking pitches. This requires communicating to the hitter and baserunner.
- We should be timing the pitcher and catcher during warm up and comparing that to the speed of our baserunners, if we have a good matchup (i.e. our baserunner is faster than the pitcher+catcher) then we attempt the steal.
