What Realmuto and Crawford Both Got Right After Getting It Wrong
J.T. Realmuto found himself facing one of the toughest decisions any baserunner will make all season, with the game hanging on it. It came in the middle game of a heavyweight series between the Phillies and the Dodgers, and by now, everyone has seen it on social media.
Justin Crawford broke for home on a ground ball to third, got hung up in a rundown between third base and the plate, and started drifting back. Realmuto, who had a clear lane to third, then decided to retreat to 2nd base after Crawford was going to get back to 3rd safely. Realmuto probably figured that Crawford would return back safely and that he had a chance to land back at 2nd. He retreated to second instead of holding at third, and the Dodgers throw to 2nd base to end the game.
The narrative from most corners has been simple: this was a terrible play by Realmuto. The decision wasn't sound. He made a critical error, in a huge game, and it's arguably one of the biggest baserunning mistakes we will see all season. I'm not here to defend his decision making either. But "just stay at third" isn't a real answer it doesn't tell us anything about how to stop the next player from making the same mistake. What can we actually learn from this?
When we look at what Realmuto said postgame, it gives us more context for what may have gone wrong, and what he can potentially do to avoid these mistakes in the future.
“Yeah, you can play it in your head. Maybe something I could have done better was play that in my head before it happened. I think that’s something on the base paths, you have to be proactive and think of those things. I was more just trying to get a good lead, get a good jump and score on a base hit where I should have maybe thought through that scenario before the play even happened.”
From Realmuto’s perspective, you can see where this gets difficult. He’s so focused on scoring from second that his attention narrows entirely to that outcome, and becomes less attentive to the other situations he needs to be ready for. You can see the competing thought processes in his own words: an aggressive mode built around scoring, and a more conservative mode built around playing out other options for himself.
But Realmuto’s main point is real. He needs to do a better job thinking through the situation before it gets to this point. It’s something coaches talk about constantly. It’s an area we are consistently reminding our players about.
Justin Crawford’s spoke postgame interview and both JT and Justin had a similar take on the situation despite the two of them being at completely different points in their careers.
“I think it’s just playing it in my head before it happens.”
A player with 11 years of service time and a player with just over a half season in the big leagues ending up at the same idea. That should put a scare in us as coaches especially ones that are preparing players for the highest level of play.
So where does that leave us as coaches? If two players at completely different points in their careers end up at the same fix, "playing it in my head before it happens," then that fix shouldn't just live in a postgame interview. It should live in how we create systems around this idea.
We want players who process what's happening in real time. That has to start long before they ever get on base in the dugout, in the meeting room, in how they talk about the game day to day.
Everyone wants players who can talk through situations like this. But saying that players don't understand the game deeply enough isn't good enough either. We have to be the ones who take a proactive approach to building that processing ability.
That means modeling it constantly: asking players to think through situations, quizzing them on a play from a different game, walking through outcomes together not just once, but as a running habit.
To help players with this we the fixes have to show up in the moments that don’t feel like they count. In the locker room, when they’re just hanging out. In the cafe as they’re making a sandwich. Out on the field during stretch, when guys are sitting around playing cards. That’s where a player’s guard is down, and the conversation feels more like talking baseball than being coached. It can show up in video sessions too, but the work needs to happen in that unstructured time, not only in a room with the lights down and a screen in front of them.
Realmuto and Crawford, at completely different points in their careers, named the exact same problem before anyone had to point it out to them. "Play it in my head before it happens."
We have players on our teams and in our systems who aren’t yet thinking through what can happen to them in the moment. We can wait for it to happen in a big spot and call it a bad play after the fact, or we can build the habit of thinking through the game long before he ever gets to second base with the game on the line.