I didn’t have room to include everything Dodgers third base coach Chris Woodward said about Chase Utley‘s baserunning skill in yesterday’s notebook. There were a few reasons for that.
For one, I wanted to give Woodward and Padres catcher Derek Norris something close to equal space to explain both sides of Utley’s controversial slide Monday. For another, Woodward had a lot to say and a newspaper only has so much room.
I also wanted to move beyond the usual old school/new school “hard/soft” debate about Utley’s style of play; a lot of strategy went into that play Monday and it doesn’t deserve to be framed in binary terms. Woodward framed it in those terms anyway, without prompt. He wasn’t shy about it.
“Unfortunately,” Woodward said of Utley’s slide, “in today’s game it gets looked at as, you know, dirty. It’s the way we’ve all known that the game should be played. The game’s gotten a little bit, I don’t want to say soft, but they’re protecting guys. Not as old school as it used to be. Those things, they’re not dirty. They’re just trying to make it harder on the defense.”
How would he describe the style, then?
“There’s a lot that goes into being a good baserunner,” Woodward said. “People always talk about instincts being the end-all, but instincts are a culmination of a lot of things that cause good decisions. That’s the ultimate outcome. You see guys with I guess bad instincts, guys that don’t process information quick. Either they haven’t thought through the situation thoroughly prior to; and you can’t think about every situation. When you’re out there and you think through situations as you’re running full speed, and you’re trying to cut and make a good turn, cut the distance as much as possible, and you’re processing information, and you’re waiting to see if the third base coach waves you home. Some guys, it’s too much to handle. They’re just like ‘I just want to run, you tell me what to do.’
“Obviously Chase has a good idea of a lot of things. He takes a lot of pride and it shows.”