Opening Day Doubleheader

See the ball, hit the ball

Welcome to Warning Track Power, a weekly newsletter of baseball stories and analysis grounded in front office and scouting experiences and the personalities encountered along the way.

Pitch clocks. Bigger bases. Shift restrictions.

Hey, Ump! Time please.

Last weekend, I discovered an oasis unfettered by rule changes, a paradise that mocks pace of play and won’t accept your wagers at the window or online. Sponsor logos on jerseys? Been doing it for a while.

This past Saturday was Opening Day for both the 8U Wildcats and the 5U Foal Division Astros. A softball/baseball doubleheader to whet your appetite for March Madness!

First pitch was at 8:30 am for the young Astros, many of whom weren’t even alive when their controversial big league counterparts won the 2017 World Series.

“My team are good guys, right?” my son asked me. I reassured him that they were, and he rewarded me by adding, “Not like the bad Astros on TV.”

That’s my boy.

If it’s possible for kids taking the field for the first time ever to play a routine tee ball game, well, they did. In the first inning, the kids batted in the order of their jersey numbers; in the second inning, the order was reversed. Then, they ate donuts.

Such simplicity was shattered by the second game of the double dip. I’d venture to guess that all of you reading understand through experience: There’s nothing routine once live pitching is introduced.

As the visiting team, the Wildcats had the privilege of watching the opposing pitcher warm up, showcasing a full windmill delivery and some serious 8U gas. Most of our girls had never faced live pitching before. It was their first game in which runs were counted and outs were recorded.

You know what we learned in the bottom of the first? Steals of second and third were permitted. I’m fairly confident that we will not be addressing how to control the running game at practice tonight. What will we work on? Throwing the ball and catching the ball. Perhaps we’ll split off into groups and some girls will focus on pitching, a specialized form of throwing and catching.

Mainly, we’ll focus on letting seven-year-old girls be seven-year-old girls.

Does that sometimes mean that the left fielder lies down on the grass during live action? You bet! It happened in both games on Saturday.

I’m sticking to my philosophy of giving the girls no more than one piece of advice per at bat. I spent a lot of time listening during the game. There are a lot of voices, a lot of noises, a lot of well-intentioned words of encouragement directed at kids who are finding their footing in the batter’s box for the first time ever. Is good coaching still good if it only contributes to the cacophony?

Sometimes, when we watch big leaguers fail, we think we have the answers, easy solutions. I learned last weekend that it’s no different in 8U softball. As rule changes impact what professional players have always been taught — to slow the game down — we should be reminded that stepping in the box and hitting Major League pitching remains one of the most difficult tasks in all of sports. Well, for the Wildcats, it’s no different. I don’t care how big the ball is or how it’s being delivered.

Coaches past and present, what’s your advice? More and more I get asked about how to coach young kids — what to stress, what to teach. I told my daughter before last week’s game that she would learn a lot about softball simply by being on the field and playing. There were plenty of rules to grasp and ways to help out her teammates even when the ball wasn’t hit to her. It was part of the fun of it. She didn’t fully get it, but she listened.

After the game, during our drive home, she told me that she wanted to learn more about baserunning. She had watched one girl on the other team round first base after a hit and head to second. She understood that the girl had doubled, but didn’t quite grasp how the decision was made not to stop at first.

That conversation was a highlight of the day. “This is exactly what I was talking about before the game,” I told her. “This is you learning how to play.”

What advice would you impart upon youth coaches? How did you push the right buttons? Please comment here or reply to this email.

Turning my attention back to the big leagues, I connected with Brett Butler, a veteran of 17 MLB seasons. I was curious how someone who twice stole 50+ bags in a season felt about bigger bases and limitations on a pitcher’s ability to throw over.

Butler, who played for the Braves, Indians, Dodgers, Giants, and Mets between 1981-1997, swiped 558 bases during his career. He was also caught 257 times.

I asked him about the keys to his seasons when he felt best as a base stealer. For the former All-Star, it was developing an understanding of opposing pitchers. “I barely got off the bag when Terry Mulholland was pitching because I thought he could pick me off,” he said of his one-time teammate.

Butler also made reference to his own lackluster success rate, noting that in today’s game he wouldn’t be given the green light nearly as often.

For a player whose career on-base percentage (.377) was greater than his slugging percentage (.376) and whose walks (1,129) outnumbered his strikeouts (907), rule changes that favor contact, running, and small ball are appealing.

“The aggressiveness that has been lost,” he said, “hopefully the rule changes will help bring some of that back.”