Hitting The Cutoff Man

Hello, and welcome to Hitting the Cutoff Man!

As anyone who has played or watched much baseball knows, hitting the cutoff man is one of the many fundamentals a player is expected to master. An outfielder can have a cannon for an arm, but if he wildly launches his throw over the head of the infielder who has come out to receive it, the play has little chance of resulting in an out. In fact, it often leads to a runner getting an extra base.

Announcers never seem to tire of telling you that baseball is about these “little things” and is a “game of inches.” They say it’s about running out ground balls, taking the extra base, getting your uniform dirty, making productive outs and giving up your body to dive for balls just out of reach.

And, of course, all of those aspects of baseball matter, to varying degrees.

At the same time, as advanced statistical analysis has improved and become more mainstream in recent years, as a general fanbase we have become more knowledgeable about the relative importance of various parts of the game. Some might disagree, but for me, taking some of the mystery out of the game hasn’t dampened my love for it. Just the opposite is true.

When we’re watching a game on TV, we no longer have to take the announcer’s word for it when he says a guy is “one of the best hitters in the league.” We can go online and find his offensive contributions quantified to fractions of a run.

And while these advances might burst the bubble of some who pick their favorite players on the basis of vague qualities like scrappiness and grittiness, in general, our newfound knowledge makes it possible to appreciate players for many different reasons. Even though he has the quickness of a sedated sloth and whiffs enough to generate wind power for a small city, Adam Dunn has value because he often hits baseballs a very long ways. On the other end of the spectrum, Adam Everett hits worse than some pitchers, but he has value because he plays a fantastic shortstop.

Statistics may not be perfect, but they tell us far more about a player’s ability to hit, pitch, run, field and throw than our eyes do. Yet what is great about baseball is that in the tiny sample of any given play, it’s still the “little things” that can make a huge difference.

Say there’s a runner on first and two outs in a tie game. The batter smacks a shot into the gap. The outfielder gets over and fields it. The third base coach is windmilling his arm, sending the runner home, and the outfielder cocks his arm, ready to fire.

In that instant, one tiny thing takes precedence over all else: Hitting the cutoff man.