Reliability of a Novel Method for Evaluating and Predicting Base Stealing Perfomance

Talent identification is often used in a variety of sports by coaches, scouts, and scientists. Talent Identification can be defined as the process of identifying current athletes with the potential to progress into elite athletes (Unnithan et al., 2012). Concerning baseball, there are specific skills that coaches and scouts look for in athletes (i.e. power, strength, and body composition). However, one of the attributes that stands out is the ability to run at high speeds. Managers, coaches, and scouts acknowledge that running speed is an important factor in the game’s outcome (Coleman and Amonette, 2014). Speed has been defined as the rate at which an individual is able to move their body a set distance (Baechle, 2000). Speed involves two impactful factors, which are stride frequency and stride length. Stride frequency is the total amount of strides it takes to cover a certain distance and stride length is the distance traveled within one stride while running. Thus, sprinting at high speeds requires a high degree of skill and coordination to accomplish (Dyriw, 2001).