Why Base Running Hurt the Cardinals
Base running is a part of baseball that gets dooly overlooked. It is an integral aspect that to the naked eye looks as simple playing tic-tac-toe. But, to the baseball enthusiast base running is the difference between winning and losing. In Game 5 as the Cardinals and Rangers reached the late innings two plays stood in which very well may have shaped the outcome of this series. And oddly enough they both came in the seventh inning. Alex Ogando the hard throwing right hander for the Rangers again was called upon to shut down the meat of the Cardinals line up. He quickly got ahead of Allen Craig the number two-hole hitter and began to throw a heavy dose of sliders. Coming from someone who used to struggle on good hard sliders down away, these would have gotten me easy. But, Allen Craig a professional hitter laid off and worked a one out walk. Up comes the king of the thunder thighs club in Albert Pujols. On an 0-1 pitch Craig inexplicitly, behooved to anyone watching the game tries to steal second base. Yes, getting into scoring position is always well and good. But, when ‘the machine’ is up? Now the Stephon Marbury and Sebastian Telfair duo in the FOX booth kept trying to explain how Pujols signaled to Craig to run a ‘hit and run’ on a 0-1 count. Anyone who knows baseball knows that in that situation stealing the base does absolutely nothing for the Cardinals. It actually hurts the Cardinals because it takes the bat out of Pujols’ hands. Instead, of the count being 1-1 with a runner still on first base; and a pitcher on the mound who does not trust his fastball command. The Cardinals found themselves with two outs and watching their best hitter be intentionally walked. The next base running blunder came from the afore mentioned Mr. Pujols. The cleanup hitter Matt Holliday, a great hitter in his own right, had a 3-2 count. Thus, Pujols was running on the play. Ogando for some reason beyond my understanding throws another slider and Holliday hits a hard liner towards the gap in left center. Josh Hamilton did a good job of getting to it and cutting it off, but Pujols who was again running on the play. Watched the ball the whole way; instead of putting his head down, picking up his third base coach and running until he told him to stop. Because Pujols turned back twice to watch Hamilton field and throw the ball back in as he was running the third base coach was forced to hold him up at third base. If Pujols runs until he his is stopped like everyone works on in Spring Training, he might have scored. Because as the replay showed Elvis Andrus caught a short hop from Hamilton and Pujols was about 4-5 steps down the line as Andrus caught the ball. If Pujols just runs and does not look back he gains an extra 2-3 steps allowing the third base coach to be aggressive and force the defense to make a great play at the plate. The next time a third base coach holds up a runner or a guy is thrown out by a step, don’t solely put the blame on the third base coach many times the great players we adore at fault just as much.
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