And I have NEVER seen a team do this as much as us, but I've seen us do it over, and over, and over again. It drives me nuts.
First of all, let me make it clear that I am NOT talking about Hogue's play, but our baserunning in general, and I saw it again on Sat.
We are VERY tenative and indecisive on the bases when we shouldn't be. We get to second on a hit and instead of running through the base and making an agrressive turn we SLOW down and kind of shuffle over the base and then all of a sudden the runner will decide to take off for third. The other major baserunning sin that we are doing is instead of looking at the third base coach, our runners are trying to pick up the ball behind them when they shouldn't. When you look behind for the ball and slow down, obviously what's going to happen is the baserunner is going to slow down, and that's going to cost them a second or two, which is all the time a decent RF or whatever needs to gun someone down.
What they should do is before they even get to second, pick up the third base coach. This is one reason why the guy is there- to help communicate to the runner what's going on behind them. Because of this, there is really no need for them to slow down or look behind them. The only time a runner should look behind for the ball is if someone hits a shallow fly ball that may or may not be caught or maybe in a run down situation. Other than that, and maybe some other exceptions that I can't think of right now, pick up the third base coach and do what he says.
Now, why are we having some problems with that? I don't know. I think most of it is a baseball instinct issue, because a lot of these mistakes are split second decision types of things that a runner has to make almost instantly. You don't have time to stop, look for the ball, and then start again.
I think Jet Butler is the WORST at this I have ever seen. Heck, he hit a ball to third base and it took him almost 2-3 seconds just to get out of the box.