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Daily Buzz: Must put dancing shoes on to play in this man's infield

Updated Mar. 4, 2020 4:49 p.m. ET

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Sam Gardner

Everyone knows that if you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball. But did you know that if you can cut a rug, you should be better prepared to catch a ball, instead?

That bit of footloose fielding advice comes courtesy of new Washington Nationals manager Matt Williams, who told reporters at the Nationals'€™ spring training facility in Viera, Fla., that there'€™s a correlation between dance skills and infielding.

"I always ask the infielders if they can dance or not," Williams said, according to MASN. "If they can dance, then they can play infield. If they can't dance, we need to get them lessons, then they'll be able to play infield. So that's all it really is. You play through the baseball and create rhythm and all that stuff. You become more accurate, all those things."

It may sound a little silly, but Williams also won four Gold Glove awards as a third baseman, so clearly he knows of what he speaks.

"They always play music during batting practice, right?" Williams said. "And I would always try to get my ground balls according to the music. I developed that type of rhythm according to what's playing on the scoreboard. With the beat."

No word yet on what Ryan Zimmerman, Ian Desmond, Anthony Rendon and Adam LaRoche look like under the sparkle of a disco ball, but the Nationals were in the bottom 10 in the league last year with 107 errors as a team --” 68 of them coming from those four alone --€” so I suppose a lesson or two couldn't hurt.

"It's important," Williams told MASN. "€œYou all know if you hear that song that you really like, all of a sudden, what are you doing in your car? You're (bobbing your head). It's the way it is. And if we can do that on the field, we've got rhythm."

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