Cubs spring workouts: Baserunning drills

Here’s a drill I don’t recall the Cubs working on in previous springs.

By Al Yellon@bleedcubbieblue Feb 19, 2018, 5:00pm CST

MESA, Arizona — One of the things I had wanted to show you today was the first live Cubs batting practice session. Unfortunately, I had to miss that in order to meet with Tom Ricketts. I trust you’ll understand that. So I’m going to try to go back to Mesa later this week to catch up on some BP sessions.

In the absence of that, I thought I’d show you these short videos of several baserunning drills that were conducted (I think) by third-base coach Brian Butterfield. This is something I don’t recall seeing the Cubs do over the last three seasons, so it’s something that Butterfield might have brought with him from the Red Sox.

It’s pretty straightforward, as you can see by these videos. The players line up and practice running through first, rounding first, rounding second, and rounding third heading to home. It’s just another way to create muscle memory so the guys don’t have to think when they’re in a game situation, just watch their coach and do the best baserunning they can do.

We’re just four days away from the first spring training game. As you can see in the videos, the weather in the Valley of the Sun wasn’t very... sunny Monday (except when i took the photo of the daily schedule). As I write this, late afternoon, it’s overcast and extremely windy, with temperatures Tuesday and Wednesday not expected to be out of the 50s. Sure, that sounds good in the wintry Midwest, but it really should be nicer here. By Friday it should be back in the 60s.

Baseball — almost here!