It's Not How You Start, It's How You Finish: Brandon Lockridge and Daring to Be Great

[Matthew Trueblood]

Image courtesy of © Denny Medley-Imagn Images

How brave are you? That's a question we all ought to ask ourselves now and then, because often, bravery is merely the equanimity that comes with premeditation, so the more we assess our inventory of fortitude, the more it grows. You might not be able to prepare yourself for the moment when you have a chance to save a baby from a burning building, but you can strengthen your resolve to do what's needed by reflecting on past moments in which that paralytic knot of fear and nausea built within you. Fear is an obstacle, but it's surmountable. You just can't let it sneak up on you.

Of course, it's not quite that simple. There are times when the costs and the benefits of attempting something daring are almost in parity. There are other times when, if you slow down enough to let your rational brain talk your sympathetic nervous system out of its freakout, you won't be quick enough to respond to a fast-moving situation. We're always training and teaching ourselves to be braver. We're also always learning about the immensity and the limits of our own courage, through experiences we can't fully intellectualize until later.

Sports are ways we can test and observe bravery—measure and celebrate and long for it. Most often, when it comes to baseball, we think about this in terms of the pitcher and the batter staring each other down with the game on the line, trying to outguess and outdo one another. Really, though, those aren't the best tests of bravery the sport offers, because the competitiveness and the cerebralness of each player takes over in those moments. Fear loves to pounce on us when our frontal lobes are relatively inactive, because the parts of our brains that are more instinctive and fast-moving are also more susceptible to the pressure of fear. A batter isn't afraid when they have a chance to come up with the winning hit; they're locked in and switched-on. A pitcher with a chance to slay a rally and start the happy handshake line is equally full of intensity and self-belief.

It takes bravery to play the outfield, though, and while it's a trainable type of bravery, it's not an easy one to achieve. Some of us are wired to see every split-second moment as an opportunity; some of us are better at perceiving the threat and the danger behind that opportunity. Thus, while being a great outfielder has a lot to do with athleticism, it also requires a good balance between fearlessness and discretion.

Brandon Lockridge has all the athleticism he needs to be a plus defender in the outfield. His speed is better than that of most of his teammates, even in a highly athletic group of outfielders. His body control isn't bad, either. He didn't quite make this catch in Kansas City, but he made a marvelous effort on it. Most outfielders don't even get a glove on this drive, but he could very well catch the next ball like it.

Unfortunately, so far, Lockridge hasn't been a great defender, overall. It's not because he couldn't finish that all-or-nothing play, though. It's because when the proposition is something other than all-or-nothing—when there's a potential cost to going all-out for a ball and not getting it—Lockridge doesn't quite have the instinctive bravery to match his talent.

That sounds like an indictment of character, but as I've already suggested, what we're talking about here is a matter of acuity and/or subconscious reaction, not self-aware cowardice. The best way to illustrate the point might be to show you, rather than further explain it verbally.

Here's a play from that same series, against the Royals, on which Lockridge was in left field instead of center.

This doesn't look much more catchable than the ball Lockridge almost ran down in the gap, and indeed, it would have been a dazzling play. However, let's break it down into a few key moments. Here's the first frame after the TV feed stabilized in tracking the flight of the ball and the pursuing Lockridge. (in each of these images, I've highlighted the ball in red.)

Unlike last year's unlikely outfield defense breakout (Isaac Collins), Lockridge doesn't rate well on Statcast's leaderboard for outfield jumps. He got a good read and a good start on this one, though. It's very well-struck, and hooking away from him, but Lockridge is fast and the ball is hit high. There's a chance, here.

Here's the last moment at which catching the ball was possible. Lockridge has taken a good angle, and he's at full gallop. To have a chance to make this play—saving at least one run and ending the inning—he has to keep that flat angle toward the line, and he's likely to have to dive. Again, though: the ball is still up there. He's closing ground. Greatness is possible.

This is Lockridge choosing not to attempt that greatness. He turns his hips slightly and lets his stride carry him backward, just a bit, toward the foul pole. He's decided he can't get to the ball, and he knows that the bounce will be big and disastrous if he tries and fails. By giving ground, he can get around the ball and cut it off on one long hop. In fact, he'll do just that. By the time the ball lands, he's in good position, and only one run will score on what could have been a two-run double.

It's still a double, though. Lockridge's brain didn't let him believe he had any chance to catch this ball, though the truth is that he (briefly) did.

That one's far from an obvious example, though. It's a long run on a long hit. The baserunner at first base, able to go with the crack of the bat because there were two outs, lurked in the back of his mind. Let's look at a play on which he more clearly had a chance. Off to Boston!

This time, the ball isn't in the air nearly as long. Lockridge needs a good first read and a quick first step to have his best chance at catching it, and he doesn't really get that.

Playing left field at Fenway Park is complicated, man. You feel as though you're covering a much longer lateral space, and the temptation to play deep enough to at least take going back on the ball out of the set of possibilities is powerful. Lockridge is starting pretty far from a sinking line drive, so he has to cover some ground. Fortunately, he has elite speed.

That's Lockridge bearing down on the ball and accelerating—but it's also the last stride with which he'll do so. His mind is about to throw up a stop sign. He's going to hit the air brakes, because his center fielder is far away and Ceddanne Rafaela is fast; he doesn't want the ball skipping past him.

The camera angle makes things a bit tricky, but hopefully, you can see the problem here. Lockridge thought the ball was sinking faster than it was; he pulled his parachute cord too soon. He's pulling up to play the ball in front of him, but by the time it lands, we'll see that another two of those high-speed strides could have brought him underneath it in time.

Take any kind of fear into the outfield with you, and opportunities will be missed. It's possible to chase opportunities too aggressively, too, of course, and Lockridge has occasionally been guilty of that in the past. This spring, his mistakes in the grass have followed a pattern: he's ever-so-slightly too wary of giving up an extra base to make the most of his exceptional potential as a defender.

One more example, and perhaps the most glaring one of the young campaign.

Unlike the sharp liner off the righty Rafaela's bat, this fly from CJ Abrams was floated toward Lockridge in left. With two outs and nobody on, there was every incentive to be aggressive, and the ball was in the air for a little while. Lockridge's jump wasn't perfect, but he had time.

Admittedly, last year, Collins would have been two yards closer to this ball by the same point in its flight. Lockridge's not-so-great first step costs him something real. He has plenty of recovery speed, though, and about a second later, he's already in a winning position to get to the ball.

One variable here (other than gumption and general derring-do) is the willingness of a player to run flat-out and sacrifice a bit of stability in their ball-tracking, during the middle part of the hit's flight. Lockridge is fast, and he was going hard after this ball at first, but he's not one for letting anything shake his lock on the ball as he chases it. If he were a bit freer with his movement, he could have gotten a half-step farther by this point, too, but he's working to read the ball. Sometimes, too, that desire to read it perfectly ends up making you default to the conservative approach if it's not fully clear you can get there. Here come the air brakes again.

He had a lot more time to close on this ball, but Lockridge wants a manageable bounce, too. Pat Murphy talks often about great fielders' facility when the ball gets close to them—about how effortlessly Joey Ortiz redirects the ball, or how deftly Brice Turang can handle an inaccurate throw or tircky hop. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, Lockridge isn't as comfortable in close quarters with the fast-moving ball. When he senses that a high or a hard bounce might be coming, he tries to create extra space in which to work with it. On the infield, that's one of several viable solutions to get an out at first base. In the outfield, it means letting balls fall in front of you sometimes, and turning possible outs into hits.

Sometimes, Lockridge does go all the way and make the play. He's not without the ability to dive or to dare. It's just the exception, right now, rather than the rule. 

Again, this is partially trainable (and, in this case, fixable), but it's partially innate. It's one thing that separates infielders from outfielders; it's one thing that separates great outfielders from merely solid ones. Lockridge is trying not to make costly mistakes with his glove, but when they've been at their best over the last two years, the Brewers have been so bold and so good that they take should-be hits away from other teams, rather than letting any could-be outs turn into hits in the name of preventing the loss of a runner or two advancing.

It might be that Lockridge will never quite be the defender his raw talent could allow him to be. He might make some highlight-reel catches on balls like that near-snag on the warning track at Kauffman Stadium, but never be the guy who can snatch away a single with a charging shoestring grab. On the other hand, he might be able to turn a corner quickly, thanks to what the Brewers believe is superb makeup and some time with the league's best coaching and development infrastructure. Consciously, Lockridge longs and dares to be great. Subconsciously, perhaps, that bravery eludes him on the occasional hooking liner. It eludes us all sometimes, doesn't it?

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