It’s called the SPEZI-O-METER, being a Cards fan it pains me to have to fire it up again.

Rightnow his strikeout percentage is .500, last year it was .353. He was hovering around .400 all of last year inevitab;y tailed off. Regression to the mean I guess.

As to base running, there’s a difference between aggressive baserunning and smart baserunning. I’m not sure the Mariners know which, exactly, they are going for.

And in the majors, coaches are supposed to know the capabilities of the opposing outfielders and their own baserunners so that they can make good decisions. I, too, think the runners shouls pay MORE attention to the coaches. I can’t believe how often I see a runner looking out to the outfield, trying to assess the situation, in a situation when a base coach has a much better chance to see it and signal him.

Most of all, though, runners could pick up an extra base now and then with a little hustle. Jogging to first is bad enough, but easing up going into second or third drives me absolutely crazy. Round the base aggressively, dammit, and see if a fielder bobbles it. I know part of the reason is that they have to play 162 games, and they can even be injured doing something like this, but I think it stinks. I haven’t gone to a HS or college game in many years, but I keep sayuing I’m going to do it just to see how kids do it these days.

/rant

The only instructions they generally rely on at first are verbal orders to hit the dirt on pick off attempts or to advance on a botched pickoff. Remember too, the effectiveness of verbal communication drops at each advancing level and therefore, probably is nonexistent at the Mariners level. More fans means you can’t hear a coach (hence why minor leaguers are not allowed to yell cutoff orders to outfielders – you’ll have to make that judgement without verbal clues to make it in the big leagues).

The third base coach (in theory) should be the one to decide whether a runner is going both 2nd to home and 1st to 3rd (in addition to signal relay pre-pitch). The runner should not be looking behind, around, etc. However… this doesn’t always work this way. It seems major leaguers like making this decision for themselves.

As to how you gague whether you would make it or not, you never have time to consider. I broke down all the possibilities like Dave did (in other words, knowing the answer before presented with the question) and did the same as a base coach. Players are encouraged to not think during a play anyways. There simply isn’t time to gague statistical probabilities (not to mention most baseball players haven’t taken enough math) and so the “smart baserunners” are the ones who probably take the time to plan everything out while the “poor baserunners” don’t take the time between plays to develop a thought framework with which to react.

And Paul, I had zoned in on the advancing on hits section. Thanks for adding the summary information.

Interestingly, it mentions that in 2002 Ichiro was one of the league’s best baserunners and he only managed to take 6 more bases than the average runner could have. The article is also cool because it uses Ichiro for all the examples.