What's up, Coach Dan Blewett in today's video, Let's talk about good
and bad stealing situations in softball.
All right, so if you're new here, I'm Coach Dan, I'm a former pro
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So again, in today's video, we're going to cover
good stealing situations versus bad stealing situations.
I'm going to cover four big ones. And these are important to understand.
And for all of you coaches and parents, it's good to let your kids make mistakes
all the while educating them on what good versus bad situations look like.
So for me, when I was coaching my baseball and my softball teams in the past,
we would just be like, look, here are the times where it's OK for you to go.
You need to also know your own speed and your own limitations,
because some players just aren't fast enough
or don't get a good enough reads to steal bases consistently.
That can always improve.
But from year to year, they need to understand how good they are
and whether they have a good chance of making it or not.
And then beyond that, say, look, these are the situations
where it's going to hurt the team if you make this decision.
Here's the time where it's going to be good for the team.
So maybe you start to reduce the amount of signs that you give.
Maybe you start to give them a little bit more free rein.
That's up to you as coaches, but education is the first thing.
All right. So let's jump into it.
Here's the first one.
And this is not as much a game situation as it is, knowing the situation,
your own strengths and weaknesses.
So obviously in softball, you're not leading off the jump is not
as is important, really what's important as your raw speed and the catcher's arm.
So if you know, the catcher doesn't have a great arm or say you have an idea
of when a pitcher is going to throw something off
speed, that's going to be in the dirt
or some of going to be tough for them to get a good to catch
cleanly and to to make a good throw on.
And you feel like you're a very strong chance, like near 100 percent.
Then you can steal that base pretty much anytime you want.
Coaches typically give the green light to players in situations like that one.
Like if you know you can make it, then go for it.
However, third is the much more tricky one, because a very short throw.
And especially with the lefty up in the box,
it becomes a very easy throw for the catcher.
So stealing third is much more hazardous than stealing second, obviously.
So you have to really, really have to know yourself whether you can do that.
But again, this is something that's pretty tried and true.
If you know you can get it, then go ahead.
The next one and this one is a little less
we'll cover the next two you may have heard, may not.
But this one is trying to steal a run in a dead inning.
So basically what this means is say
there's no one on and two outs and you get on first base.
The inning is pretty it's pretty unlikely that you're going to score at this point.
Right, with two outs. No one on. Now you have a runner on first.
You still need a couple of hits.
So in situations like this, especially if you have good hitters on deck,
I say like the the leadoff hitter is up or the number two hitters up,
or if you get throw thrown out, it doesn't matter that much
because you still have a really good spot of the order left.
You might try to steal second.
So now that you're on second with two outs, just a single is going to score
you depending on where it's hit and how hard it's hit.
And now you kind of squeaked out a run in an otherwise dead inning.
So, again, if there's not much cooking, you got two outs.
Now you get on first base.
It might make sense to try to steal second,
just to put yourself in scoring position in that otherwise dead inning.
So that's a good, smart play if you have a pretty
you know, like I said, and it does matter who's coming up in the order.
So if it's like your nine hole hitters up or your eight hole hitters up
and you're going to steal in second and then lead the bottom of the order
starting up again, it might not make as much sense.
Sometimes you want to let that batter just play it out, either
strike out or get a hit or just, you know, finish their bat.
So that way, the next inning, the top of the order comes up.
So those are other considerations in that.
But again, the dead inning style of second
makes a lot of sense and a lot of situations.
The next one and these are the two big ones that are essentially traditional
good versus bad stealing situations, no one is stealing second with no one out.
This makes sense because now you can manufacture a run.
And that's really the crux of all this.
When you steal second when no one out.
Now, a fly ball to right field will allow the order to tag up
and go to third with one out
and then another deep fly ball will allow the row to tag up and score.
So now you've manufactured a run.
You knew you got no hits and scored
because you got that runner into scoring position with no outs.
Now, that's an important concept to understand and being able
to manufacture run
because again, whether it's a fly ball to right or ground, what a second.
That's going to allow you to third
and then the sack fly or just the ground ball to short
or second is going to allow you to score. Man--giving your team a chance
to manufacture runs with a steal is very important.
And that's why this next one is also a good time to steal.
So if you're on second with one out,
it makes a lot of sense
to try to steal third base with one out, because now if you've stolen third
base with one out, guess what?
A sack fly scores you or a ground
ball up the middle if they concede the run will score you. Right.
So that, again, puts you in a position to score run without requiring a hit.
Those are really smart steals and it's really tough to defend against that.
Even if you have a stud pitcher pitching against you
because they can't necessarily strike everyone out
and they can't necessarily cause a pop up on the infield, they might get
, you know, otherwise like good resol, which is like a groundwater short.
But because it's a ground ball to short, the runner is going to take off
the leaves the bat and she's going to score on that. Right.
So that's why these two stealing situation, stealing second with no outs
or stealing third with one out, they both allow you to manufacture a run
and that gives your team a huge boost and it's demoralizing to the pitcher.
So bad times to steal bases, stealing third with zero or two outs.
And here's the reason why.
Now, again, if you like, almost guaranteed to make it
like you just know, like this catcher's got a weak arm. I'm super fast.
I can take this base fine.
But if you get caught and you know these times, it's a really dumb play
because stealing third with no one out is you're you're so far
into scoring position already, you can already manufacture a run. Right?
So stealing third with no outs. Sure.
It gives you two chances now to get a sack or to get that that ground
ball up the middle to score you on just a ground ball.
But you just don't really need that.
So the risk and reward being on second, the likelihood
you'll see your score on second with no one out is very high.
So stealing third with no one out is just kind of like an unnecessary risk.
The same thing with two outs stealing, third with two outs.
You're probably going to score on a on a base regardless, right?
It's going to take a base hit to score. You can't manufacture on two outs.
So it's going to require a base hit for you to score.
So stealing third with two outs, you're already in scoring position.
You're already going to be in motion as soon as the ball leaves the bat.
So you're probably going to score on any single regardless.
So the risk reward there doesn't make sense.
And of course, I know people going to leave comments like, well,
you can score on a pass ball or you could you know, you could steal in a while
scoring a wild pitch.
That's true. You can score more ways from third than from second.
But again, the question is, if you're playing higher level softball
where there's not that many pass balls and there's not that many wild pitches
by the run by the catcher, very well can throw you out stealing third
that I'm not sure the risk and reward is going to make a lot of sense there. Sure.
If it's sloppy, 11U softball and the balls are constantly going to the fence
and the likelihood of shoe throwing you out of third base is pretty low.
Then maybe it makes sense to steal third with two outs.
Again, nothing is ever set in stone, but in quality softball, where balls
are not going to the backstop, very often teams are not making a ton of errors.
The risk and reward of stealing third with two outs just doesn't make
that much sense.
So, again, coaches, I think the takeaway here is that you should teach your players
these scenarios, lay it out for them, show them this video, whatever it is,
and say, look, these are the smart times and the less intelligent times
to steal a base.
And I think you should give them some free
rein to play the game and build their baseball or their softball
instincts, their softball IQ, so that they can learn the game
by doing if we only allow them to steal when we give them the sign.
And we're not explaining every sign we give
because you don't have time to do that, then they're not really learning the game.
But for one summer, I gave my one of my baseball teams, we didn't do science.
I said, these are the situations where you can do things.
If you want to lay down a bunt, you can do it in these situations.
These are not as good situations if you want to steal a base.
These are the times to do it. These are the times not to do it.
And I gave them free reign.
And sometimes they made the wrong move and we talk about it.
But in general, things worked out pretty well.
That's not to say you shouldn't use signs,
because I still think signs are valuable.
But you can give your players a lot more free rein,
especially the fast ones who will steal bases, give them free
reign, explain and let them make smart decisions. They're smart.
You don't have to control every aspect of the game as a coach.
All right. So hopefully today's video is helpful
if you've any questions or comments.
Feel free to leave them in the description below.
And I'll see you here in the next video.