The running game is a subtle responsibility; it often falls to the bench coach, delegated down from the manager a lower-profile assignment that nonetheless carries outsized meaning inside a clubhouse. Being good at it has traditionally been a badge of honor for coaches. Teams that control the running game aren’t just holding back free bases, they’re signaling a kind of institutional discipline, proof that a staff is thinking deeply enough about the game that it shows up in the margins.

That belief has run deep in baseball for decades. But over the past several years, the sport’s ideas about how to manage the opponents’ run game have started to converge. Nearly unanimously, teams would prefer their pitchers get off their best pitch without sacrificing quality to hold a runner. For the most part, it’s been a winning strategy. Teams moved through the first half-decade of the data revolution without so much as a peep from people without the numbers to prove otherwise.

A major shift occurred in 2023, however, when MLB fundamentally altered how pitching staffs could manage the running game. By introducing slightly larger bases and limiting pitcher disengagements, the league designed an environment specifically to encourage aggressive baserunning. This shift immediately applied a quiet but intense pressure on coaching staffs, forcing them to rapidly reevaluate how they control the running game without sacrificing pitch quality.