In Baseball, when you have a runner on a base, and less than 2 outs, and the hitter hits a very high and long flyball, why does the runner on base not advance to the next base – They Look Like they’re contemplating, but never go even If there is plenty of time?

Question

When the hitter hits the ball high and long for a fly out.
Why does the runner not run to the next base?

In: 2

Answer 1

Because to advance to the next base, you have to tag the current base *after* the catch (at which point you often don’t have time to advance). It’s called [tagging up](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tag_up), and if you don’t do it, you’re out if a fielder with the ball touches your original base before you do.

That said, runners often *do* advance on long fly balls (particularly from 2nd to 3rd on a long fly to right field), so the premise of your question’s just not true a lot of the time.