UTK Special 1/22/24

Burying the Lead

I was talking with a person who is spending much of the winter working at a major training facility, helping athletes from some of the top colleges get ready for the NFL Combine, coming up in just about a month. There, small improvements can mean big dollars and one of the easiest things he says he can do is take tenths, not hundredths, off 40-yard dash times by simply changing technique. Most football players don’t have a track/athletics background and the quirks of how the sprint is done in Indianapolis - on turf, laser measured - makes some techniques very specific.

They’re much the same for baseball testing, which tends to do the 60-yard dash, for no apparent reason. In those situations, players are taught much the same technique as Combine trainees for the start. I couldn’t find good video of last year’s MLB Combine testing, but it was remarkably similar in how it was conducted.

Which got me to thinking …

We know now, thanks to Statcast, who are the fastest players and exactly how fast they are.* We know exactly how big a lead they get, what the pitcher and catcher are doing, even exactly where the first baseman is posted. All of this is known and can be very simply equated to know how fast/quick a baserunner must go to successfully steal second. Let’s watch Ronald Acuna Jr, who’s very good, very fast, but very orthodox in technique:

(*The one issue I have with sprint speed in both MLB and other sports is that the context is difficult. We’re not used to thinking of human beings in MPH, nor is most of it at that peak speed. The acceleration is important, but in baseball at least, time from start to second base is the key. Pitch release and pop time are in seconds, not MPH.)

But why is it like that?