Hargrove wants less, more aggressive baserunning
From the PI blog:
”We’ve spent a lot more time on base running, and we’ll continue to do so,” Hargrove said. ”The one thing that bothered me was when we’d run into sure outs. I don’t mind if we’re out because it took a perfect throw. I can accept that.
”But when we’re so aggressive that we’re out by 20 feet, that’s just not smart. It’s the kind of thing if you do it once, you’ve probably done it one time too many.”
“I want everyone to run aggressively. If you think you’ve got a chance, I want you to go.”
(later)
“Why is everyone getting thrown out by 20 feet? What the hell is going on out there? This is so frustrating!”
Here’s the thing – you can run aggressively and win. Billy Martin ran some of his teams this way, where he’d go into spring training and say “run every play. Every extra base I want you sprinting for it.” His guys would get thrown out and he’d scream at them, they’d get closer, he’d scream at them, and he wouldn’t stop until they were safe. The Angels are held up as an example of a team that does this year in and year out. It can be done. You need to be smart about how you make those choices, when you do it, and which players you use, but it’s not, on its face, a ridiculous idea.
This thing Hargrove does, where he goes “We’re going to be an aggressive base-running team,” but doesn’t get his team to do it well, they fail, fail, fail, and eventually it’s such a disaster that he backs off and scratches his head and comes back and says “This year we’re really going to be an aggressive base-running team.”
Every time Hargrove tries to explain his philosophy, instruct, or explain something, he manages to offer a succinct argument for he should not be employed as a major league manager.
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Hargrove…harharharharhar… It’s sad when fans and reporters can see your manager is an idiot but the team leadership hired the guy and has stuck with him even after two seasons!
From the NJ.com Star Ledger (by Dan Graziano)comes the article “A look at Managers on the hot seat” and of course, our very own Mike Hargrove number one on the list:
So yes, please, run to your little heart’s content Mariners…it gives Bloomquist more of a chance to play!
[deleted, see comment guidelines]
Apparently talks with Johjima will have additional delays. Baserunning practice has been extended by half an hour.
Buzzmaster: (3:38 PM ET ) I just heard from the Mariners and they have less than an hour left in practice. So he’ll join us around 4:30 p.m. ET!
On a side note, why do so many people abuse the apostrophe?
Good topic. There is an idea that to be aggressive you have to run all the time…”keep running until you are out.” an old coach of mine used to repeat endlessly. Edgar was an aggressive guy on the bases, in his own way. He would manage a couple of steals during the year despite being a near cripple. Watch, understand what is happening and take advantage. Why can’t Grover get this across??? He’s more like my old coach!!
Grover’s approach to baserunning mirrors his approach to pitching. He seems to believe that merely repeating phrases without proper instruction to players who may or may not be able to execute such directives is enough to achieve results.
Grover should ask Ichiro about quality baserunning (even though he won’t). Ichiro gets blasted about his “cautious” baserunning approach (usually by the same crowd that can’t stand the fact that he speaks in Japanese to the media), but I have never seen him thrown out doing something dumb at an inopportune time. Anyone who successfully steals 45 bases and get thrown out only twice must know what they are doing.
Okay, here goes…
Derek, for the first time ever, I’m going to disagree with you on this one. I read the quote in your post, and then went and read the article directly from the P-I blog in its entirety, and while I agree that Grover’s an idiot I don’t agree that he’s proving it in this case. Where you’re reading his comments as “I want everyone to run… if you think you’ve got a chance, go” and “Why is everyone out by 20 feet… this is so frustrating”, I’m reading a more rational “I haven’t given up on aggressive baserunning, we just need to get better at it.” I’m willing to agree to disagree on the issue and I won’t press my point any further, but I did want to point out that there are other ways to interpret the quote.
(And please, don’t hold it against me that I defended the man one lousy time; I want him gone as much as the next fan.)
This brings up a question though, and one likely born of ignorance… What proportion of bad aggressive baserunning can be blamed on base coaches? Do they perhaps need to have better judgement of the legs running toward them and the arms trying to get the ball there first, or is the judgement in most situations entirely up to the runners themselves?
I could be wrong, but it seems to me that aggressive baserunning is completely useless when it isn’t practiced in conjunction with intelligent hitting, i.e. working the count, taking pitches, etc. and intelligent managing.
Telling the baserunners to run smarter is just wasting words when the hitters are hacking at anything and everything within a foot of the strike zone. And how many times last year would the #1 and #2 hitters get on base only to have Grover tell Jose Lopez to bunt? Hargrove’s predictability in baserunning situations last season was also part of the problem.
Sorry, #7 should read: Hargrove’s predictability in baserunning situations last year was a significant part of the larger baserunning problem.
there was a short report on the Mariner’s spring camp yesterday in Japan, and it had Hargrove yelling “if you wanna win, pay f*cking attention” after baserunning practice.
Apparently the team has some attention issues (-_-;
Ahhhh. No. That was intended to be a summary of his year-and-a-couple days philosophy, where he preached, got crappy results, quietly stopped doing it because it wasn’t working (with the team then doing better on the basepaths), ending with him returning to preaching it all over again.
You may be confusing baserunning with base stealing. There were a few times last year (including twice in one inning) when Ichiro could have advanced or scored if he had simply waited to tag. Great base stealer? Of course. Baserunner? Not exactly.
Derek, do you see Hargrove thinking: “I want to stress agressive baserunning, but learn from the problems we had last year and teach better judgement and to run efficiently”? -or- “We want to run agressively, last year we had some problems, but I really think it can work so we’re going to try it again”?
I see Hargrove with a cartoon thought balloon over his head that reads “duh”.
On the other hand, when he’s stealing bases, it’s more or less him. If he’s running the bases, he has to rely on the coaches…and Grover….
[Piniella]
Sometimes even a great baserunner looks at a fly ball and thinks it’s going to drop and starts to take off. The fact that Ichiro moved off 2nd base once — or twice — on a ball that he initially thought was a base hit but then realized it was going to be caught doesn’t make him a bad base runner. Not to mention the question of whether it was his decision or the coaches. That’s exactly why eyeball impressions are so often wrong.
Be aggressive but don’t ever make an out on anything other than an exceptional play? Kind of sounds like the attitude of pitching coaches that Jim Bouton lampooned in Ball Four. “Don’t walk him. But don’t give him anything to hit.”
(Matt Damon voice-over)
“Here’s the thing … if you can’t spot the sucker in your first half hour in the game, then you ARE the sucker.”
Hargrove wants less, more brains. Or something like that.