He begs to differ
From a prof at WashU in St. Lou; the headfirst slide is supposedly quicker than feet first, after all. Two caveats: player should still not slide into first, and (as we all have been reminded) the injury risk on headfirst sliding is high...
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as much as that article tries to confuse the issue
with techincal jargon quotes, head first slides are eailsy better than feet first and running thru first base, IF you can actually execute it correctly. bad timing and the obvious injury issues with the head first means that unless you are going for the plate in a one run game in the world series, its just dumb to do it.
damnit alex, no one is questioning you work ethic/intensity, they just want you to be healthy and hit the damn ball.
to be fair
a lot of people with no inside knowledge randomly question his work ethic
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by Matt Klaassen on Mar 8, 2010 1:09 PM EST up reply actions
Don't think that's true re: sliding into 1st base
You move faster if you keep pushing with your feet.
It's true
if and only if you go horizontalish and execute the final pushoff within a certain range of distance from the bag. Lunge too soon, you sacrifice locomotion and slow yourself down via drag as you slide, too late and you’re not accomplishing anything anyway (and may actually lose time if you’re too late, as you’re then arcing over the bag as you flatten out rather than across it).
The optimal dive, of course, is one which causes your hand to strike the forward edge of the bag at the climax of the dive arc, before the rest of your body begins to skid through the dirt..
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What has always annoyed me
is the amount of people who claim sliding (particularly into first) is not faster. It most certainly is faster. You can’t argue with physics. The problem is as Zep says above – execution and safety.
I’ve heard the ridiculous argument about that sprinters don’t dive head first across the finish line so it must not be faster. Well, I assume they’d actually like to avoid injury and you know, run in races. People can be so obtuse…
Come again?
Murphy was an optimist.
by The Ol' Perfesser on Mar 8, 2010 1:30 PM EST up reply actions
I've heard baseball analysts on radio/tv
say that head first slides into first are not faster than running through the base (or sliding feet first). The example that they use to justify their belief is that Olympic sprinters don’t dive head first across the finish line in the 100m dash.
That is of course ridiculous, a sprinter wouldn’t sacrifice his/her body like that for a few hundredths of a second and risk serious injury.
My post above isn’t written all that well, but I think my point is clear, is it not? Head first slides are the fastest way to first base no matter what anyone tells you. It’s just not the best way to get there for obvious reasons, predominantly injury risk.
This analogy fails for another reason.
Diving for the finish line is like sliding into first base. Sprinters running the 100 yard dash don’t have to stop at the finish line or be tagged out.
Go Royals!
Exactly
A big part of sliding is the ability to carry maximum speed while still being able to stop on the bag and evade the tag. You don’t need to worry about that at 1B (or a sprint race), just pure speed. If you are on stride, running through is surely faster. Just the energy wasted getting your body down low to slide must make it so.
*Sigh*
This isn’t a debatable issue. Do we know what atoms make up a molecule of water? Yes, that is scientific fact. Do we know inconclusively the fastest way to get to first base (if done correctly). Yes, it is also scientific fact.
This isn’t something nebulous like figuring out what is moving the stock market, this is something that is absolutely and conclusively measurable. Even Baseball Tonight, not a bastion of intellectual thought by any means, had a show where they timed the differences between diving into first base and running, and in all cases diving was faster.
BTW – you aren’t wasting energy going into a slide if you dive at the exact moment that your momentum is carrying you forward and you are far enough away from the bag that you don’t actually have to lower yourself to reach the base.
“Do we know inconclusively the fastest way to get to first base (if done correctly). Yes, it is also scientific fact”
That’s contradicts itself. But I appreciate you setting me straight.
Damn.
That really does ruin my point, doesn’t it…
‘Inconclusively’ was originally part of my stock market sentence. Not fixing it when I changed where I used totally torpedoed my post.
Well, I’m still right and you’re wrong! So there. :)
I deserve it.
Earlier I made fun of a Klaassen Tweet that had a typo, so I’m being taught a lesson in humility that I earned.
Ok, you’re running to first, when you leave your feet at the start of the headfirst slide, aren’t you decelerating? And, when you hit the ground, doesn’t that just increase your rate or deceleration? Isn’t the fastest way to get to first base to continue to run at full speed through the bag? Can one dive through the air or slide across the ground as fast or faster than one sprints?
The immoderate moderator
by Scott McKinney on Mar 8, 2010 7:06 PM EST up reply actions 1 recs
Here's the caveat!
- .... .- - .----. ... / .-- .... .- - / ... .... . / ... .- .. -..
by MarioVanPeebles Republic of China on Mar 8, 2010 7:08 PM EST up reply actions
Think of it terms of being horizontal instead of vertical
If you dive at the exact right time you’ll cover about 2 full steps faster than running by being horizontal. Hence, it wouldn’t be on the ground but in the air, albeit briefly, before hitting the bag. Keep in mind we’re only talking about a few hundredths of a second. Also, it’s very difficult to time the dive properly (and an obvious injury risk). Basically, it should be avoided unless you are trying to avoid a tag.
Also regarding my title to this comment, TWSS.
Hence, it wouldn’t be on the ground but in the air, albeit briefly, before hitting the bag.
So you’re not talking about a slide at all. You are talking about diving where the player moves through the air briefly before making contact with the bag. While the help of gravity might make this faster than running through the bag, no one slides that way. No player dives at a base , making contact with the base before the ground. They always slide on the ground for some distance before making any contact with the base. Therefore, a genuine slide into first base (as baseball players do it) is not at all faster than running through the base).
The immoderate moderator
by Scott McKinney on Mar 8, 2010 11:10 PM EST up reply actions
What I'm saying in a nutshell
is that you are diving outward instead of downward. Nevertheless, how long they spend in the dirt is moot when the point is whether or not it’s faster, and it is faster by all available metrics.
See my post below. There are plenty of people on this site that state opinion as fact (not you NYRoyal) but I try very diligently not to be one of them. When I say that I’ve seen statistical evidence that it’s faster, I’m not just pulling this stuff out of my ass. There are also multiple places where I’ve seen or read this information from respectable sources.
The best visual evidence came from a segment several years ago on Baseball Tonight where they timed various players diving and running through the bag with all the benefits of video technology. It is very clear that diving was faster even though the margin is small.
I’m not saying players should do this, I’m just saying that I’m right.
To clarify
The player wants to be in the air on their dive until their fingertips tough the bag. In other words, the friction from the ground should not be an issue because ideally the first thing touching the ground is a finger on the base.
So disregard my statement about being in the dirt being moot, it isn’t. My point really is that if the dive is done correctly it’s faster.
And I still know I’m right about this. :)
Again
While a dive may be faster, in practical baseball terms, that is irrelevant. No player dives and then makes contact first with a base. Players don’t dive; they slide. And a baseball slide (whether head first or feet first) involves sliding along the ground before making contact with the base. And that sliding involves significant deceleration.
So, a dive at precisely the right moment may be faster than running through the base, but an actual slide is not.
The immoderate moderator
by Scott McKinney on Mar 9, 2010 10:09 AM EST up reply actions 1 recs
i always had it explained that if it were faster
sprinters in the olympics would do it.
you slide to avoid a tag, not to get there faster.
See discussion above
It covers this very misconception.
Am I on an island here or something? No one seems to believe me on this subject which I’ve always felt is pretty cut and dry. All I know is that I’ve seen multiple studies where a correctly timed dived is slightly faster than a full out sprint.
I’m not making this stuff up people. How come we can talk about the intricacies of wOBA while discussing the merits of linear regression for predictive purposes, yet no one can fathom that diving could possibly be faster than running?
You're not on an island
but you’re also not right. If you dive, even if you stay in the air and don’t drag across the ground, you’ve given up step where you could have pushed off the ground to accelerate. The only reasonable argument one could make in defense of sliding being faster would be that if you rotate such that you’re head-first, your arms can extend farther forward from your center of mass than your foot can when you’re running. I’m sure that geometric advantage is more than off-set by giving up your thrust and having to convert some of your forward translational velocity into rotational velocity.
I'm going to stop arguing this point but I'm not wrong
All the tests on this either show diving being faster or the results being inconclusive. I’ve never seen a study that clearly shows running upright is flat out faster. Until I see one then I’m going with the empirical evidence that is currently available.
haven't seen any tests
did some research—found out most experts are on the ‘you run faster when you’re running’ side. go figure
I'm not going to stop arguing
because you’re wrong about something I can point to specifically.
When you run “straight-up”, you are not making the most efficient potential use of your propulsion, because your muscles are not thrusting you in the direction you are headed. You are, instead, locomoting by way of rotation, for lack of a better description; the dual rotation of the joint assemblies that are your leg provide forward locomotion in the same way that gears work.
When you dive, on the other hand, as begin to lower your body in order to prepare for takeoff your muscle propulsion becomes closer to forward propulsion, which is in fact more efficient and “faster” (plus, you begin cutting down wind resistance). If we could run like that all the time without losing our balance and tearing our faces off on the cinders, track stars would probably be running the 100m in well under 9 seconds, maybe even closer to 8.
So the final lunge toward the bag for a diving runner is actually an increase in propulsion, combined with a reduction in drag AND the added marginal benefit of allowing gravity to assist in the ballistics of the thing. It’s all about maximizing the benefit, which means not sliding for 5 feet before reaching the bag, and not diving in such a way that you land on the bag with your jock.
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Thank You.
Finally some support by someone who can explain mechanics much better than I can!
you're just making things up now
none of this is verifiable
Just because you don't understand kinesiology
is no reason to disregard people who do.
Seriously, have you never in your life done any weight training at all? What I said above is blindingly obvious to anyone who has. Go out and run, and concentrate on what your muscles are actually doing while you’re doing it. Then go do some leg presses, which is the closest approximation to the diving takeoff. You’ll see.
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Seriously, have you never in your life done any weight training at all?
Is that a shot at me? That’s a short at ME, isn’t it, you bastard.
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by Matt Klaassen on Mar 10, 2010 10:28 AM EST up reply actions
You don't begin to decelerate until you hit the ground
unless the distance of your lunge is what one might term “excessive”. That’s because if you dive at the appropriate distance from the bag, gravity counteracts the lack of propulsion.
Anyway, see my comment above for more depth.
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And hitting the ground is my point
Sliding into a base involves sliding along the ground. That is the only way it is done. And that is slower than running through the bag. I’m sure there is a possible dive, at the right moment, which is faster, but that really has nothing to do with sliding, as it is done in baseball.
The immoderate moderator
by Scott McKinney on Mar 9, 2010 10:12 AM EST up reply actions
Here I thought we were discussing physics
not practicality.
Diving head-first into first base is stupid, but not for the idiotic reason most people prattle on about, because when timed correctly it IS faster, period. No, it’s stupid because in order to do it properly you’re increasing your injury risk by a ridiculous factor and the benefit — realistically, measured in hundredths of a second if not thousandths — just isn’t worth it.
On the other hand, since doing so at home plate actually decreases injury risk on most levels, it’s the right thing to do. (It’s more hazardous than sliding feet-first, but sliding feet-first is measurably slower; it’s less hazardous than not sliding at all, though, what with the heavily armored guy there usually blocking the plate.)
At second and third, it’s also the right thing to do — but you need to time it differently, because part of the function of the slide in those cases is to provide deceleration so as not to overrun the bag. That makes the head-first slide “slower” than running through the bag, but since you can’t run through the bag anyway, it’s of no consequence.
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I was discussing the claim made at the top of this mini-thread
…which is the following statement:
What has always annoyed me is the amount of people who claim sliding (particularly into first) is not faster. It most certainly is faster
No, sliding into first base is not faster. Perhaps diving into first at just the right time is faster, but sliding is not. jsolo was frustrated at the stupidity of people saying that sliding into first isn’t faster when physics told him that it is. The problem is that he was equating diving with sliding.
So I wasn’t talking about the practicality and feasibility of diving vs. sliding vs. running through the bag. I was just pointing out that sliding is certainly a slower way to get to any base than running through it.
The immoderate moderator
by Scott McKinney on Mar 9, 2010 8:00 PM EST up reply actions
Poor semantics on my part
I should have said diving instead of sliding.
That's true.
Sliding feet first is never faster; not only do you drag, but you waste momentum and time pivoting your legs forward.
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Feet first or head first, sliding is slower than running through the bag
The immoderate moderator
by Scott McKinney on Mar 10, 2010 8:42 AM EST up reply actions
Again
Or rather, more succinctly:
It depends on how far you actually slide before contacting the bag. Absent the sliding part, the dive is faster; therefore it follows that at some point the length of the slide, if it commences prior to reaching the bag, eliminates the advantage gained from the dive. The question then becomes “at what point does this occur?”
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I would contend that...
The benefit from the dive is small and therefore the deceleration from sliding on the ground will almost always negate that small benefit. And again, looking at what slides really are in baseball, the contact doesn’t occur just an inch or so before the player gets to the base. It occurs a foot or more (often 2+ feet) in front of the bag. So then instead of a dive within the optimal distance at an optimal vector (straight to the bag without touching the ground first), you’ve got a slide which started further away than the optimal distance, at a suboptimal vector, plus the fairly rapid deceleration caused by contact with the ground.
The immoderate moderator
by Scott McKinney on Mar 10, 2010 11:41 PM EST up reply actions
One could also contend that
unless the slide part of the action begins ridiculously far away from the bag, the deceleration from the slide is of small consequence.
I mean, seriously, if anyone’s going to debate the issue of which is faster, but then throw out “oh, that’s just a small benefit” as if that means it’s irrelevant, then why have the argument in the first place? Why don’t we just say “this is a ridiculous discussion because in the final analysis it probably doesn’t matter one way or the other anyway because the difference is negligible”?
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Diving is faster than foot first...
I’ve timed them in practices… lol. The kids are always a few hundredths faster when they dive…
Coffee. The NEW Performance Enhancing drug for Sport's Writers. Just ask Ken Rosenthal.
This guy explains all on YOutube BTW
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHflbQoVyN0
He also says run thru 1st.
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