How to time home to first? What is the home to first time in the attached video?
What is a quality time for HS Soph? HS Jr, and HS Sr?
How relevant is this metric overall?
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From the crack of the bat to the foot touching 1st... Elite is under 4 seconds...
I saw an article on scouting myths a while back and just googled it again and found it. Thought this was relevant:
Home to First Times
As I stood down the RF line of a game, I was locked into an interesting player I was trying to get a home to first time on. A parent saw me with my stopwatch and walked over and began a conversation with me. During this conversation, I was told their son runs a consistent 3.70 home to first (3.7 seconds from the contact of the bat with the ball, to when the batter-runner's foot touched first base).
I asked this gentleman if his son was lefty or righty and who was timing his son. I was told his high school coach times him in games all the time and he bats right-handed.
It is becoming more and more apparent to me that people don't know how to correctly use a stopwatch. This, combined with a parent's natural instinct to embellish, has lead to some wacky numbers floating around out there as the norm. Stopwatching doesn't seem so hard you would think (start the watch, stop the watch, get the time, rinse and repeat). But I would counter that there is a correct way to use the stopwatch and nobody is educating themselves on how to do it properly. The result is misinformation.
This parent had obviously taken some time to educate himself on home to first times, knew the correct scouting lingo, sounded educated, knew the correct time increment or ballpark range. He knew 3.7 seconds was brag-worthy. If he would have said his son runs a 6.6 home to first, maybe I could say he was mistaken with 60 times. This gentleman knew his stuff enough to hold a good baseball conversation.
Now, back to the time in question and why it is bogus. The MLB Scouting Scale (20-80) indicates that an elite, Hall-of-Fame quality, "80-runner" is a right handed batter that can run home to first in under 4.0 seconds or less. It is pretty rare to see a runner run anything under a 4.0 from the right side, the way it is rare to see a 99mph or 100mph fastball. There are very few people in the world that can do it - much less a high school player.
It should be noted that you will see batter-runners run home to first under 4.0 if it was off of a bunted ball. They are running as the ball is bunted, they don't have to complete their swing and get their balance. But to say a high school player runs 3.7 from the right side consistently after an in-game swing is the equivalent of saying someone throws 105 mph every pitch in high school.
It just doesn't happen.
At the average high school game in the spring, you will see one or two players total run 4.4 secs or less. Every 10 games you watch, you will see a kid run 4.2 or less. And every 100 games you watch, will you see a player run 4.0 secs or anywhere near it.
FWIW:
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teddy9 posted:How to time home to first? What is the home to first time in the attached video?
What is a quality time for HS Soph? HS Jr, and HS Sr?
How relevant is this metric overall?
How relevant will depend on the position (MI or CF) and if the metric is high. Aside from his academics, son's top scale running speed was a big part of his recruitment. Coaches and scouts were aware of his high SB numbers and SB%, but wanted to see for themselves. When coaches came to see my son play (in showcases or games jr year of baseball), they always carried a stopwatch to clock HTF times.
As others have mentioned, crack of bat to touch of bag. If you want to know an approximate time, have someone near first for bag..easy to hear crack of bat. Then eventually get a reputable third party for "official" time. If I gave a time for video it would be approximate..not sure when player hit bag (angle far away).
From the video I get 4.1 - 4.2 range. Sometime a little higher or lower too.
I use video I pull into Coaches Eye which gives 0.03 resolution. I think it's counting frames so it should be indisputably accurate. Using this method I measure 4.23s here.
Smitty28 posted:I use video I pull into Coaches Eye which gives 0.03 resolution. I think it's counting frames so it should be indisputably accurate. Using this method I measure 4.23s here.
I got 4.28 watching video timing with my phone. I'll take +/- 0.05 reaction time at my age any day.
teddy9 posted: How to time home to first? What is the home to first time in the attached video?
What is a quality time for HS Soph? HS Jr, and HS Sr?
How relevant is this metric overall?
The metric can be and often is relevant. How relevant depends on the overall team philosophy. Some teams are very dependent on footspeed but some aren’t.
The trick with getting good home-2-1st times, no matter how well the stopwatch is used, is realizing just how difficult it is in games to get any player’s “best” time. During the regular season I often time pitchers to the plate from 1st movement, and runners from home-2-1st.
The way I do it is, I hit a specific key on the keyboard when the pitcher makes his 1st movement, hit it again when either the ball is caught or hits the ground, or is hit by the batter. Then I hit it again when the batter’s foot touches 1st base.
But, if you take a look at the attachment you’ll see the problem. It would be fantastic if every player busted it out of the box and ran a hard 90 every time he put the ball in play, but that’s not even a decent myth. The truth is, the only time you’ll see a batter making it to 1st as fast as possible, is if there’s a reason the batter goes hard. That won’t often happen on routine grounders, popups or fly balls, and it won’t often happen on hits to the outfield unless the batter gets it in his head that he might be able to “steal” an extra base. Usually it’s gonna be on an IF grounder the batter is either trying to beat out or trying not to get doubled up on.
So, in the end there’s likely only gonna be a really hard 90 run every 10 PAs or so, and likely half of them aren’t gonna be timed for one reason or another.
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Good points STATS4GNATS, I have a few clips of him needing to bust it out of the box. This one was the best angel and quality. Even in this one it appears he didn't really turn it on until 1/4 of the way in. But to your other point, what good is 4.0 to first if, 1) the hitter rarely puts the ball on the ground or 2) Doesn't;t bust it all the time to take advantage of def. miscues, etc.
What's a good home to 3rd time, hehe. I seem to have more of those full speed runs than the other.
teddy9 posted:
Good points STATS4GNATS, I have a few clips of him needing to bust it out of the box. This one was the best angel and quality. Even in this one it appears he didn't really turn it on until 1/4 of the way in. But to your other point, what good is 4.0 to first if, 1) the hitter rarely puts the ball on the ground or 2) Doesn't;t bust it all the time to take advantage of def. miscues, etc.
What's a good home to 3rd time, hehe. I seem to have more of those full speed runs than the other.
When I put that capability into my scoring program, I did it to try to find out who was “hustling” and who wasn’t. About 4 years ago I was scoring for a coach who was obsessed by hustle. He had coaches timing the players getting on and off the field and asked me if I could get home-2-1st times.
It didn’t take very long before he almost had a stroke looking at that stat. It’s just not something most people pay much attention to in the course of a game unless someone beats out a hit they weren’t expected to, doesn’t run on what looks like a routine out and an error is made. So when they see lots of times in lots of different situations, it almost always look like a lack of hustle.
To me, I don’t think it’s too much to ask a player to run as hard as he can from home-2-1st mebbe 3 or 4 times in 2 and a half hours, but the reality of it is that there aren’t many Pete Roses out there. And I don’t doubt for a second that any team who has every batter running hard on every BIP is gonna get a lot of benefit over a season because. Trouble is, how does a coach motivate the players to do it?
Just a quick note for players at showcases or scouted games. Run as hard as you can on pop ups, routine grounders, etc. Could be a coach/scout trying to get a Home to first time on you.
I got my son to start giving at least 95% effort every time down the line by 1) telling him to use it as a dry run in improving his 60y time and 2) I told him if he dogs it to first I will meet him in the car. No need to bake in the heat for low effort.