Peter Gammons MLB on Base Running

Peter Gammons: The Art and Craft of Baserunning

April 6, 2014 by Peter Gammons 0 Comments

Brian Butterfield is one of those people everyone in the game knows. Derek Jeter to this day mentions him because after making 56 errors in the minor leagues playing as a frisky colt, Butter’s long hours on the minor league level helped him stabilize his energy and become a Hall of Famer. He is at the park before noon, studying film and analytics, on the field with his fungo by 2:30, pushing and teaching defense and drills and baserunning.
One of Butterfield’s favorite expressions is “you can tell the character of a baseball player by the way he runs the bases,” which also tells you why—with the work of Torey Lovullo, Arnie Beyeler and Butterfield—one of the most underappreciated elements of Boston’s 2013 championship was the team’s baserunning. Now, their scouting and video provide reams of information, on how each opposing outfielder throws depending on which side he fields balls, which side of the bag shortstops prefer to cross…but, in the end, Butterfield says it comes down to each player’s “awareness” and attention to the details and the situations that games present.
Jeter, for one, is a great baserunner, aware of all situations, never taking plays off. Butterfield says the two best baserunners he ever saw were Paul Molitor and Larry Walker. Brad Ausmus, a former Butterfield student who agrees with the baserunning/character thought, has long believed Jeff Bagwell is the best baserunner he’s ever seen (a decade ago, Harold Reynolds did an ESPN piece on Bagwell as the best baserunner in the game when he was still a slugger). “It takes hard work and application,” says Butterfield. “Constantly having a sense of where you are, where all the defensive players are, practicing cutting bases.”
In spring training, when someone marveled at Jason Heyward’s ability to make perfect cuts across bases, turning a routine double into a triple, teammates talked about how Heyward works at that craft. In the summer of 2011, when he was already the best player in the Cape Cod League, Cotuit shortstop Deven Marrero regularly came to the park the morning after a night game to work with his manager, Mike Roberts (a renowned baserunning teacher), on baserunning and defensive footwork. Marrero was Boston’s first pick in the 2012 draft, is in double-A and dazzled John Farrell and the coaches in spring training.
“This is not about being the fastest guy,” Butterfield says, pointing out that even with a great player like Jacoby Ellsbury on the team, the consensus was that Mike Napoli was the best baserunner on the team, with Dustin Pedroia and Jonny Gomes in the same breath.
“Baserunning is about never taking a play off, about being mentally in the game,” says one general manager. “Magic Johnson and Larry Bird would have been great baserunners if they’d played baseball. I’d love to have seen Tom Brady and Russell Wilson when they were baseball players.”
One of the best books ever written about sports was John McPhee’s “A Sense of Where You Are,” about Bill Bradley when he was playing at Princeton. It could be adapted to apply to baseball and baserunning and how it tells us about the character of those who play the sport.