Tagging Up

[bulldogcountry1]

I have a bit of a pet peeve that seems to happen all too often at the college level. It all comes down to "halfway" or "tag" on deep fly balls with runners on first and/or second. It seems that most players are coached to go halfway with the hopes of a further advance, should the ball fall in. That's a solid fundamental rule, but there are many times when a ball is hit deep, and it appears the fielder has a good opportunity to make the catch. Whether he does or not, the fielder would have no chance of throwing out a tagging runner. If it falls in, then a two base advance is still possible.

There are a lot of different scenarios that could come into play: score, outs, location of runner, location of fielder, etc., but to me, it seems like the most advantageous philosophy would be to try to tag whenever you can. Whether the ball drops or it's caught, runners advance. As it is now, you often see teams get nothing out of well struck balls. Over the long haul, I would think that a team would get more out of aggressive tagging than going halfway and hoping the ball isn't caught.

[dawgoneyall]

A reasonably decent player has a feel for the flight of a ball to the outfield on whether to tag or go half way.

[Spider-Man]

At second, the runner should always tag on fly balls hit to RF or RCF.