Didn’t major league players just spend a month doing baserunning drills? There was an epidemic of poor baserunning today, and it makes me sick. Two of the mistakes probably cost their team the game.

1. Early in the Mets-Nationals game, Xavier Nady is on third and fails to tag up and score on a fly ball to Alfonso Soriano, who is completely new to his position, and has probably never even hit a cutoff man before, let alone thrown someone out at the plate.

2. Later, Nady almost gets caught napping off second base.

3. Same game, Soriano is thrown out at home on a double with nobody out and his team down by a run in the eighth inning. Granted, the replay showed the catcher dropped the ball, but Soriano shouldn’t even have been running. The Nats would have had second and third with nobody out, with three chances to drive in both runs. Instead, they got none, and the Nationals lost.

4. On a routine fly ball to center field, Alex Gonzalez of Boston somehow wanders too far off the base and gets doubled off.

5. After singling home the tying run, and sending Ichiro over to third base with one out, Jose Lopez gets thrown out trying to stretch his single into a double. Now instead of having a runners on first and third with one out, there are two outs. Of course, the next out made is a fly ball to center that would have scored Ichiro and given the Mariners the lead. Instead, it just ended the inning. M’s lose.

Here’s hoping for some smarter play from the A’s and Yankees tonight. There was a chance that I could have had a ticket to the game, but it fell through. I’ll be watching on TV, instead. Just as well. I have a cold, and I should probably stay warm, anyway.