Welcome to Snyder's Soapbox! Here, I pontificate about matters related to Major League Baseball on a weekly basis. Some of the topics will be pressing matters, some might seem insignificant in the grand scheme of things, and most will be somewhere in between. The good thing about this website is that it's free, and you are allowed to click away. If you stay, you'll get smarter, though. That's a money-back guarantee. Let's get to it.
I'm generally not a baseball fan who complains about the state of today's game or, specifically, whines about how "players nowadays just don't have fundamentals." It's nonsense. They do. For the most part. There is one glaring exception in my view, though, and that would be doing the job, correctly, of an on-deck hitter on a play at home plate.
When there is going to be a close play at the plate, the on-deck hitter needs to be just inside the dirt surrounding home plate, facing the baserunner as he looks up the third-base line. His job is to watch the path of the throw home so he can instruct the runner not only whether or not to slide, but where to slide. This is to say, if the throw is going to be outside home plate to the third-base dugout side, the man on deck needs to not only be pointing down toward the ground -- slide, dummy! -- but also be pointing toward the inside of home plate. He should be providing any information he can to help the baserunner avoid a tag.
Most major-league players are terrible at this. It drives me far crazier than it should, admittedly. It's a small thing, but it's such an easy thing to fix. It's just paying good attention to the game.
Here's an example. This play at the plate arguably cost the Brewers the game. While many will rightfully focus on the excellent throw from Eli White in left field, in addition to the tag, seeing William Contreras here behind the plate signaling to slide at the absolute last second really bugged me.
Contreras even came from the first-base side! He ran way too far around the plate. If he's in good position there, Chourio very likely could have avoided the tag, especially since it was so bang-bang.
Watch this one from this past Saturday. Seiya Suzuki didn't slide and was tagged out and the broadcaster credited Contreras with a "deke."
Any fake out from the catcher, while a great idea that was executed beautifully, shouldn't matter. The baserunner needs a teammate in his view behind home plate instructing him. It just didn't happen.
This isn't to pick on Contreras or the Cubs. As I said, pretty much every MLB player is awful at this.
Maybe it's because the game moves so fast at this level. The hits getting to the outfield are often 100+ miles per hour, the runners can generally cruise very fast and the throws from the outfield are strong. Compare the speed of the game to high school, for example, and it's night and day. Many high school kids are better at this particular "job" than MLB players, though, and I cannot accept this.
When a player is on deck and there is a runner in scoring position, he needs to help. It matters. Doing a poor job here can cost a run and, as with our first example above, maybe even the game.
It's a mental play and an effort play. Every MLB player is smart enough to be on top of this. Please get better at it, guys.
