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Hi Geckos!

It’s Coach Ian here. Since we keep getting rained out of practice I wanted to give you something to do with baseball anyway. Here are a few fielding situations to talk through with your parents. Can you figure out how to get the out? I bet you can!

First off, here’s a picture of a baseball field. The little green circles are y’all — Geckos playing the field. Can you point at each circle and say the name of the position?

I’m sure your parents can help. Here are the positions to match to circles

• Pitcher (there are two)
• First base
• Second base (hint, they don’t usually stand right on second base)
• Third base
• Shortstop
• Left field
• Center field
• Right field

Great work. I’m sure you did great work. Now let’s talk through some situations. In the following pictures the blue lines are where the ball is hit. Let’s assume they’re all ground balls, so you can’t get an out by catching it.

Groundout to the Pitcher

In this first picture, the ball is grounded straight back to the pitcher. Bobby is playing defensive pitcher. He’s quick on his feet and he makes the grab. Where is he going to throw?

If you said “Throw it to first base,” then you were right! Here’s a video of the Mets David Peterson (who gets a lot of ground balls) fielding the hit and throwing it to Pete Alonso at first base.

Note that he throws underhand. Pitchers often do that since they’re already close to first base when they throw, and don’t want to make it hard to catch. But everyone else will throw overhand.

Groundout to the Shortstop

Next let’s do a groundout to the shortstop. In this picture, Astra is playing shortstop. The chopper is hit to her, she takes a few steps toward it and snags it with her glove. Where does she throw?

You’re right, it’s to the first baseman again! When in doubt throw to first base. There will always be an out there.

Notice in this video how Francisco Lindor runs towards the ground ball. That’s called “charging the ball.” He does it so he can field it more quickly, and gives himself plenty of time to throw.

Groundout to the shortstop with a runner on first base

Okay, now here comes a tricky one. This is the same type of ball in play as the last one, but now we have a runner on first base. Let’s imagine Benji is playing shortstop now. He fields it on a hop. What should he do next?

Well, there are a lot of right answers this time!

As always, Benji could throw to first base. When in doubt throw to first base!

That’s what Lindor did here. The ball was hit pretty slow and he had no chance to get the lead runner. So instead he makes the simple throw to first base for the sure out.

But sometimes you can get more. It helps your team if you get the “lead runner,” so either running or throwing to second base is good if you can. And sometimes you can even get two outs! That’s called a “double play.”

In this video, Lindor fields the ball near second base with plenty of time. So he just steps on the base. That’s one out! And then he ALSO throws to first base to get two outs on one play.

We were going to look at two more situations, but it looks like Baseball Savant search is down right now. So that’s all for today!

Parents, if you’re feeling jealous and want baseball homework homework as well, I really liked this article by Alex Chamberlain. Some questions for discussion:

• What makes a fastball good?
• What is a dead zone?
• Why should we think about dynamic dead zones?
• Why might we included velocity in calculating dynamic dead zones? Why might we not?