Tagging Up

[MD Longhorn]

Originally Posted by hit4power

Not a blue so don't generally post here, but I think the reason you've never seen this in baseball is that no one can hit a pop-up high enough to give the runner time to get home and back to 3B. It's 60yds from 3B to home and back and a world class 60 yd dash time is 7 seconds. Allowing an extra second for the time to stop and turn around before sprintinig back to 3B plus assuming less than world class speed and I'd guess that the best 3B-Home-3B time you could hope for is 8 seconds or a bit more. Some quick calculations show that a pop-up with an 8 second hang time has to be hit about 260ft high or over the top of a 17 storey office building. Not saying it couldn't ever be done, but awfully hard. At a MLB game the other day, I counted the hang times (I know, but the physics of stuff like this is interesting to me) of several really high pop-ups and none even got to 6 seconds.

I get your point, but I think you've eliminated a few key factors. First, the runner is leading off, and likely already headed somewhat toward home. Second the runner doesn't have to make it ALL the way back to 3rd to be safe - just has to be close enough so that he can't be thrown out after it's caught.

So consider a "normal" short fly to right - a speedster could easily sprint home and get back close enough to 3rd that he couldn't be thrown out by the right fielder.

[hit4power]

Originally Posted by mbcrowder

I get your point, but I think you've eliminated a few key factors. First, the runner is leading off, and likely already headed somewhat toward home. Second the runner doesn't have to make it ALL the way back to 3rd to be safe - just has to be close enough so that he can't be thrown out after it's caught.

So consider a "normal" short fly to right - a speedster could easily sprint home and get back close enough to 3rd that he couldn't be thrown out by the right fielder.

I did think about the leading off part, but for the sake of argument lets give the runner a walking lead of 10-12 feet. When he reaches home at full speed I figure it will take him at least 10-12 feet to come to a stop, reverse, and start sprinting back to third. And if he only needs to be with 10-12 feet of third base when the ball is caught and thrown, then he still ran 60yds round trip and it still took him 8+ seconds. You make a good point about a pop-up on the right side - I suppose it could take a full second after the catch to fire the ball over to 3B, so maybe a 7 second hang time would be enough for a really fast runner to pull this off. That's still a ball hit around 220ft. high.

[MD Longhorn]

Originally Posted by hit4power

I did think about the leading off part, but for the sake of argument lets give the runner a walking lead of 10-12 feet. When he reaches home at full speed I figure it will take him at least 10-12 feet to come to a stop, reverse, and start sprinting back to third. And if he only needs to be with 10-12 feet of third base when the ball is caught and thrown, then he still ran 60yds round trip and it still took him 8+ seconds. You make a good point about a pop-up on the right side - I suppose it could take a full second after the catch to fire the ball over to 3B, so maybe a 7 second hang time would be enough for a really fast runner to pull this off. That's still a ball hit around 220ft. high.

Again, you're forgetting the time it takes to throw the ball to 3rd... insignificant if this popup is to SS ... but significant if it's deep 1B or shallow RF near the line. Plus - Grey's suicide squeeze is a PERFECT example of how this might come into play.