Timing is everything:
Baserunning Metrics

Are you wondering how to motivate your team when it comes time for baserunning practice? If so, here are some great ideas to help pump up the enthusiasm at practice.

When it comes to timing your players running bases there are 3 main baserunning times to get:

• Home to 1st base
• 1st base to 3rd base
• Home to Home

There are also some simple ways to make sure that everyone is timed the same, and, that their times relate to games as much as possible:

1. Home to 1st
   • Player starts at home with a bat and her helmet
   • She takes a swing and runs to 1st base
   • You start your watch when her first step hits the dirt and stop it when she steps on the base
2. 1st to 3rd
   • Player starts at 1st base with her helmet on, in their regular baserunning start
   • You start your watch when her first step hits the dirt and stop it when she steps on the base
3. Home to Home
   • Player starts at Home with her helmet on and a bat
   • She takes a swing and starts running
   • You start your watch when her first step hits the dirt and stop it when she steps on homeplate

Timing each of your players will help give you a better idea of who should be stealing and who shouldn't, as well as who you can send home on certain plays in the outfield and who you shouldn't. It also helps conditioning.

Also, if you want to make baserunning times a competitive thing for your whole team - try this:

• Time the entire group recording each players individual times for each of the 3 distances listed above
• These individual times will help you determine each players personal best time and their average time
• When everyone is finished, figure out the average time for the entire group at each distance - AND - the slowest individual time for the entire group
• Now, each time that your team runs bases the entire team's average at each distance MUST beat the best average group time at that same distance or else...something happens like situps or pushups or everyone stays and cleans the equipment (something that the group has agreed on BEFORE the baserunning starts)
• Oh, AND the slowest person must always beat the fastest time by the slowest person to-date or else the entire team does situps or whatever was agreed on prior to running

This will really motivate them all to run hard whenever you're timing.

For more information on Baserunning check out our Baserunning eDrills as well as our Baserunning eSkill.