College Outfield Trick Play I've Never Seen Before

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[parttimehuman]

I was expecting the runner at third to tag up prematurely. Good on him for not falling for it.

[patdry]

I was watching college baseball clips the other day, can't remember the team but I noticed they did this same thing - it caught my attention and I thought it was pretty smart. An evolution of the fake-cut/fake-throw in the infield. I'm sure we'll start to see a lot more of this when the situation allows. Great breakdown Matt!

[rickvoigt]

Back in American Legion ball, our coach had us do what we called the 3 Ball walk. With a runner on first, when the batter got his third ball in the count, he would throw his bat toward the dugout and start jogging toward first. At the same time, the runner on first would start jogging toward second. By the time everyone figured out that it was only ball 3, the runner was already safe at second and the batter had to return to the plate. It didn't work with runners at 1st and 2nd because the throw to third was too easy. This worked for a while, but eventually the word got out and our opponents were looking for this trick.

[johngutierrez]

We used to teach this at our HS 15 years ago. It never worked for us, but we did try it whenever the situation was right.

[johndoe-yweb]

The other cool thing about this is that when the left fielder is faking the catch, the centerfielder has his glove down at his side. He's selling it just as hard too. But no, have never seen this before. But it does remind me of the play you see sometimes in football where the team receiving the punt will have their blockers drift back to the wrong side of the field with a second return man faking the catch of the punt, while it's actually being received near the opposite sideline. In both cases, the team running the fake is depending on the other team to be following the players and not the actual flight of the ball.

[greggchilds]

I ump college and semi-pro ball for 23 years and never seen that play. That was an excellent play by both outfielders. I hope that the umps were sharp enough notice the most likely fielder to catch the ball, because that’s not a play that you pre-game discuss for coverage. Nice job in discussing the potential and resulting play.

[bernie]

I've never even thought of this! Interesting!

[msm]

This is kind of similar to where an outfielder knows he's not going to be fast enough to catch a ball hit deep, runs towards where it's probably going to come down, stops a little bit early and looks at it like he IS going to catch it, and then fields it when it hits the ground. This causes runners to not advance as far as they could have.

[greenbeagle]

This is the only baseball I watch. Thank you. You make baseball interesting.

[bruceboman]

All great points, Matt. Faked out the camera operator.😊 But props to operator for tracking it smooth.

[Kelp]

Slight clarification. If the run scores before the appeal at another base for leaving early has occurred and as long as the runner at third tagged up correctly, the run still counts.

[MrBaltimoreRon]

Been watching baseball 49 years, I never saw it and I LOVE it!!!

[ndeezlo]

If the run scores before the third out (being a player, that is not the run scorer, not tagging up) it counts.

[roger]

Great camera angle. Very helpful. Thanks.

[clydeparker]

That's clever, like to see more plays like that

[craigo]

Brilliant! Great coaching and training.

[CubsWin]

Great analysis about getting the runners to leave early.

[michaelhuene]

This is really a no-risk play for the defense and it will work sometimes. I expect that we will see many more teams doing this going forward.

[pcpolice]

My grandson’s high school team has done plays like this. Maybe not this exact play. Their coach is a baseball genius. They won the Missouri state championship last year, 2023

[BrandonLinden]

I could see another advantage to this would be having the 'fake' fielder a bit more shallow and perhaps make the runner at 3rd that it's not going to be deep enough to score and perhaps they don't try to tag.