Billy Ball and Speed

One of the great things about baseball is that you can talk baseball all year round. Over on the Transition Game, Nick is trying to make the case that speed matters more in the post season.

With the A’s losing two postseason series on egregious base running errors, it’s easy to focus on speed. And wrong - because the other team’s speed didn’t hurt the A’s, the A’s hurt themselves. It would be interesting to review the regular season to see how often A’s base runners were involved in close plays at 3rd or home. I suspect that it’s pretty rare and that the base running gaffs can be partially attributed to being in an unfamiliar situation.