Junior Lake beat out a drag bunt last night for the Chicago Cubs. He made a head first slide into the bag. The announcer said, and I’ve heard this before, that it would be faster not to make the head first slide. My take is that, although it may be faster to keep running, it is quicker to make the head first slide. When you dive into the bag, your hands are several feet ahead of your feet (could be as much as 8 feet, depending how tall you are.) Hence, your hand can touch the bag before your foot lands on the bag.
The only reason to slide into first is to avoid a sweep tag with the defender off the bag toward the home plate side. Slide whichever way gives you the best chance of avoiding the tag.
Your hands need to get down to the bag. Your feet are already down there. The motion to dive is slower than running.
Yes, when you dive into first your hands are 8 feet ahead of your feet, but only four feet in front of your center of mass. And if you’d run through the base your front foot would have hit the bag (assuming you’re good at running bases, which most pro players are) a couple of feet* ahead of your center of mass.
So you’re talking about a 2 foot advantage instead of an 8 foot advantage. In the running through the bag you are able to put all of your energy into maintaining forward speed while for a dive you’ve put energy instead into rotating your body, leaving contact with the ground (allowing air resistance to start deceleration), etc.
I’m guessing that 99.99% of the time it makes absolutely no difference either way in terms of reaching the bag before a tag while a slide increases risk of injury and reduce ability to go to second on an errant through while gaining only an increase in difficulty being tagged if the first baseman is pulled off the bag by the throw and can’t get the force out.
I want to see the published research.
If you slide, you’re slowing down; if you keep on your feet,you can accelerate (or at least maintain your speed). Unless the first basement is trying to tag you, it makes no sense, especially since you can run past the bag to slow down.
In addition, it puts your hands and body in a position to be spiked as the first baseman gets into position; Jose Reyes had that happen to him when he tried to slide into first one time.
Sports? Moved from GQ to the Game Room.
samclem, moderator
I cannot get the video to play. I’ve had this problem with other videos. I think one of my anti-malware programs prevent the playing of certain videos, but I don’t know what the problem is. Can someone post the conclusion?
Does similar logic apply to fielders making diving catches? I suspect not but I’m having trouble convincing myself that’s the case. I suppose that one difference is that you don’t have to get your glove all the way to the ground to make a catch, but you do to touch base?
More critically, with a diving catch you need your glove to be the point of contact - you can only make the most difficult catches by diving, because if you run through the spot where the ball’s going to land, you might get there, but you can’t catch it with your foot. When you’re running the bases any part of your body can get there, long as it gets there. There could be plays, like on humpback line drives up the middle, where the logic would hold, though.
As far as sliding vs. running through first, all you have to do is ask yourself why Olympic sprinters don’t dive to the line if it shaves time off. Tenths of a second from glory and they never thought of that?
Sprinters at all levels are trained to lean forward during the last moments before crossing the finish line. It’s the first chest to reach the line that wins.
Leaning, diving, sliding are all ways to gain a little more distance over time but only for a very short distance. Sprinters couldn’t run a 2nd sprint as fast as their first if they maintained their finishing line lean thru the entire race.
Although, baseball players have to consider stopping very close to 2nd and 3rd or risk being tagged out and they have to consider changing directions every 90 feet, I have absolutely no idea why anyone would slide into 1st.
This isn’t the same player who stole 1st base, is it?
Running through the base beats you to the base by about 3 inches. I’m actually surprised it’s that little. But that was for best-case scenario, where the dive is perfectly timed so the hands hit the base and there’s no friction against the ground to account for. (Of course, running through the base, the stride has to be well-timed, too, so you hit the bag with your leg well out in front of you, but that’s not nearly as difficult to do, in my experience.)
As to how they did the experiment, they basically got the same guy to run to first over and over again, sometimes running through, and sometimes sliding.
What sucks is that what I said ended up being pretty close to what the video said and I was just making it up from thinking about it. But it looks like I’d watched the video.
Yes, it’s all about me.
On a slightly peripheral note, sliding into first is also a bad idea because of the risk for injury. Just this year, Indians center fielder Michael Bourn screwed up his hand and had to get five stitches because he slid into first (his hand was stepped on as the pitcher ran over to tag the bag). He was on the DL three weeks.
Thanks.
Because they would cripple themselves diving onto a cinder track. Baseball has a dirt baseline.
There are good arguments against sliding into first, but this isn’t one of them.
Plus, the finish in an Olympic track event is not driven by just any part of the body crossing the plane of the finish line (otherwise they’d all reach out in front of themselves at the end).
USA Track & Field Official Rules - Rule 167 for Running Competitions
So getting your hands to the finish line faster doesn’t accomplish anything. And if running through the bag barely beats out just needing the tips of your fingers to touch it in a dive, then it really beats out your shoulders another two feet back.
Sliding into first makes it harder for the umpire to make the call so maybe he will make an error in your favor
Why would that be harder? Either way he’s watching the bag for contact while listening for the sound of the ball hitting the glove.