Taking this in a different direction, I'd like to suggest that leaving too many runners on base is too often over-analyzed when it should be dismissed as bad luck. If my team is consistently hitting its way on base, then it should be able to hit those runners in, IMO. Let it happen. If it doesn't, it's bad luck. Clutch hitting (or lack of it) is frequently something we like to attribute to kids when there's not enough evidence to support that it exists. I'm not suddenly going to start bunting and stealing w/ runners on base just because I left runners at 2nd/3rd the previous two innings, or because I think a certain girl hits worse when there are runners in scoring position.
Leaving Runners On - Losing the Game
- Thread starter Doug Romrell
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JJsqueeze
Dad, Husband....legend
better to leave runners on then to have them thrown out getting too cute. DDs last team must have burned 2-3 a game with a coach that liked to try to get creative...sometimes 2-3 an inning. Better to play the percentages and let the girls hit. I would spend my time teaching them how best to take advantage of what is given to them than to work on things like delayed steals of home.
Yet sometimes, like when you have a batter with a very low batting percentage at bat when you are batting the roster up to bat, when "the percentages" are tilted in favor of having the runners be much more aggressive than they would be with a better batter up to bat.
Let me stress here that I am not blaming my player who was at bat. I was giving the signals from first base. I should have been at 3B to chit-chat with the runner at 3B through all this. Sometimes the runner at third is the real deal in terms of knowing whether or not she can get in by working the defense a bit.
That's right, Coach Kevin.
It's the tradeoff one faces when batting the roster--it leaves you no subs. It's why a team really needs to be deep with hitters, so deep that the subs are batting 1000 like the rest of the team. ;-)
It's the tradeoff one faces when batting the roster--it leaves you no subs. It's why a team really needs to be deep with hitters, so deep that the subs are batting 1000 like the rest of the team. ;-)
It's Fall Ball.... we also bat the roster during Fall. We don't worry too much about W/L record (however we do want to win). We use Fall Ball to really look at the girls because a 2 hour tryout really doesn't show a lot about a player during game situations. We will also take risks we probably wouldn't take during the Summer... like your situation, we probably would have tried a squeeze play, even with 2 outs!!! Hahaha
That would have been my next option. A squeeze over a straight DS. Either way I agree with not hitting away with a sub.200 hitter (assuming you consider a weak hitter sub 200 and a good hitter 300.)
Greenmonsters
Wannabe Duck Boat Owner
A .200 hitter will reach via a safe hit 2 out of 10 times. Unless her OBP= her BA, she will also reach base some small percentage of the time by BB or HBP. She also probably will reach base some small percentage of the time by E. In the course of that weak hitter's at bat, there also is a small chance of a WP or PB on every pitch. Considering all that, its not overly optimistic to conclude that the weak hitter will have a successful at bat approximately 3 out of every 10 times its her turn to hit.
Given this, a delayed steal of home is only a higher percentage play if you believe that the runner on 3B is going to score more than 30% of the time. The answer to that depends primarily on the skill and experience of the defensive team, rather than their age, which IME might range from 12U to 16U.
Oh, I think the girl who was on 3B had a higher percent chance of scoring, given her fantastic base-running acumen, than the batter's chances for success in this situation. I made a mistake. I need to trust my gut instinct more.
