Posted by Michael Street on Tuesday, March 2, 2010 at 4:51 pm

An interesting piece at the Mariners’ website this week explains Don Wakamatsu making a strategic change: shortstop Jack Wilson will give the bunt signs for the infield.

Typically, major-league teams have the third-baseman or catcher call for defense and relay the signs to the pitcher. I couldn’t find anyone who could tell me why this has always been the case, but it’s presumably because the shortstop has other things to worry about, like signaling to the second baseman for coverage on a double play, keeping the runner close to the bag, or monitoring the catcher’s signs to know where to play.

And so the third baseman, with nothing else to do, would relay the signs for bunt defense—who’s covering which bag, whether they’ll put the wheel on to get the runner at third, whether they might have a pickoff—to the pitcher and the infield.

The problem, as Jack Wilson explains it, “There have been a bunch of times when I will see the guy on second base doing something that makes me think we can pick him off, but another play already has been called.” Now, he’ll have the option to change the play, since everyone will be focusing on him for the signs.

Inside-baseball minutiae aside, the bigger story is where Wak got the idea, from Team Japan. He saw them do it in the World Baseball Classic, liked what he saw, and decided to use the idea.

America has always seen itself as the fountain of baseball knowledge, and it’s that stubborn pride that may have kept us from learning strategy from our Far Eastern counterparts. That’s a benefit of the international tournament not often discussed—how baseball knowledge can be shared across countries. Most US fans, myself included, would expect it to work the other way around.

This is the first time I’ve heard of significant strategy flowing the other way across the Pacific, but more lessons could be learned, particularly from Team Korea’s In-Sik Kim. Kim always seemed to push the right buttons at the ‘09 WBC, even when it meant substituting for his starting second baseman in the third inning, with the team leading 7-1. He juggled players and pitchers masterfully, taking a squad that nobody expected much from all the way to the finals.

As for the Mariners’ situation, it helps that Don Wakamatsu is a manager who’s happy to think idiosyncratically, and works for a general manager who allows him to try those ideas out. Not that GM Jack Zduriencik makes calls on the field or decides who flashes what signals to whom. But he does bring Wak the on-field talent, and one of those guys is Jack Wilson, an excellent defender with the experience and confidence to implement Wak’s new stratagem.

It’s  one more example of the new regime in Seattle, where there’s a great confluence of talent, brains and management, and the willingness to try new things to exploit all three. Wak and Zduriencik have worked together to create a team focused on pitching and defense, with offense as the third priority—mid-market small ball.

That makes small adjustments and strategic innovations like this all the more important, and anyone who knows anything about baseball knows how steeped in tradition things like strategy can be. Modern statisticians might argue about the true value of a stolen base attempt or the danger of an intentional walk, but managers will still call for them at the time that tradition dictates is right.

Wak being willing to try something new is significant, and where he got it is even more so. That he happens to be an Asian-American manager playing for a Japanese-owned franchise just makes it even more interesting for a writer like me.

I don’t expect to see every manager checking out other Asian teams to get new stratagems, but I do think they’ll be paying a lot more attention to non-U.S. teams during the next WBC. And maybe a few U.S. fans will, too.