With two outs in the sixth inning Monday night, Josh Rojas took his normal lead off second base ahead of Giants pitcher Sam Long’s 2-1 offering. When the pitch came in, he hopped to his right once, then twice. He wanted a big secondary lead in case Alek Thomas lined a single into the outfield.

Or at least that’s what Giants catcher Austin Wynns thought. So Wynns popped up, fired to second and caught Rojas in no man’s land.

“Rojas gets himself hung up,” Steve Berthiaume said on the Diamondbacks broadcast, relaying the assumption made by everyone inside Chase Field.

Everyone, that is, except Rojas and baserunning coach Dave McKay. For them, this was all part of the plan.

Wynns, as McKay had identified in his advance scouting, is an aggressive backpicker. So after the 1-1 pitch, Rojas walked lazily back to second base with his head down, kicking the dirt. The goal was to appear inattentive, draw a backpick and then take off for third as soon as Wynns cocked to throw.

Although Rojas didn’t know when Wynns was going to throw, he was fully prepared to take advantage when he did. And on the 2-1 pitch, that’s what happened. Wynns threw to second, Rojas dashed to third, got in easily and picked up his 11th stolen base of the year.

“He set him up,” McKay said. “That was intentional.”

It was only one play in an eventual blowout win. Thomas struck out on the next pitch. But for McKay and the Diamondbacks, it epitomized an aggressive baserunning approach that’s paid off in spades.

According to Fangraphs, the Diamondbacks have been worth a National League-best 16.1 runs on the bases this year. Since McKay was hired prior to the 2014 season, baserunning has earned them 97.6 runs, the most in baseball. The gap between them and the fourth-place Phillies is bigger than the gap between fourth and 23rd.

“A lot of pride in that,” McKay said of those numbers.

The ideology that’s spurred the Diamondbacks’ baserunning success is simple: Do everything the right way. That means sprinting out of the batters’ box. It means rounding first hard. Perhaps most importantly, it means attention to detail when making turns.

“We focus on turns probably more than any team in baseball,” McKay said. “We target the base with the right foot. Any other team will say right foot, left foot, doesn't matter.”

McKay’s done the math. The difference between a below-average turn — pushing off the base with the wrong foot and running wide — and a good one can be as much as eight feet. That’s enough to turn a bang-bang play at the plate into being comfortably safe.

Earlier this week, a player told McKay he wasn’t worried about his turn at third because he was going to score easily. The message didn’t go over well. “No, no, no, I don't even care if you hit a home run,” McKay told him. “Every time you touch that base, I want you to focus on a sharp turn.”

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As such, many of the Diamondbacks’ winning plays on the bases don’t carry the drama of Rojas’ stolen base Monday. Take Wednesday’s series finale against the Giants. In the seventh inning, Sergio Alcantara singled to left-center. Typically, singles to left are off limits for runners going from first to third. But Jake McCarthy took off from first, read the play quickly, made a perfect turn at second and got in easily to third. On the throw, Alcantara took second base.

Instead of having runners on first and second, the Diamondbacks had two men in scoring position. One play later, Jose Herrera brought them both home with a safety squeeze that the Giants threw away, giving Arizona a lead it wouldn’t relinquish.

“Being an outfielder, I understand that when a guy's aggressive on the basepaths, it puts pressure on you, you gotta make a perfect throw if he's gonna take second,” McCarthy said. “Any time the ball goes to the outfield and I see it might've split two outfielders or been down the line, I just try to be aggressive and when I round it, I take a peek up and if it looks I can make it, I just take off.”

For McKay and his players, every play is a risk/reward proposition. There’s always a chance of getting thrown out. But that risk, he says, can be overstated.

For example, traditional baseball wisdom is to not make a dangerous play at third with two outs. McKay sees it differently, a mindset formed in three decades of coaching under Tony La Russa, who lives by the mantra, ‘No guts, no glory.’

Having a runner on third puts pressure on the pitcher. It makes him wary of throwing balls in the dirt, making a hitter’s life easier. And if he does throw a ball in the dirt, any misstep can bring the run home. These are the things that play into decisions like Rojas’ to steal third — a move that nearly paid off a pitch later. Although Thomas struck out, the pitch was in the dirt. On another day, it could’ve gotten past the catcher and scored a run.

Beyond attention to detail and aggressiveness, there’s a third key tenet of McKay’s ideology: information.

In an average day, McKay — who also coaches outfielders — spends the majority of his time painstakingly breaking down video to help with base running.

“Pitchers, their times to the plate, their pickoff moves, all that kind of stuff,” McKay said. “Give as much information. Catchers, catcher's throw, his arm strength, whether he likes to throw behind guys.”

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Understandably, the Diamondbacks are careful to not divulge their secrets. Even if they won’t face a pitcher again this year, they might see him in the future. But there’s any number of potential tips they look for. A pitcher moving his glove up. Buckling his back knee. Tipping his head.

Those are the types of revelations McKay shares with his players when he meets with them half an hour before every game.

“It's like, that guy really does that? And it's there for us for the taking? It just makes me laugh,” Rojas said. “(McKay) usually hands me the stopwatch and we look on film and I go off the tip, click it when I see the tip. … A guy's normal time (to the plate) is a 1.6 (seconds) and we're turning it into a 1.9, a 2. It's pretty cool.”

While the Diamondbacks lineup is full of young, inexperienced hitters, Jordan Luplow understands just how unique McKay is. He’s been on four major league teams, including the Cleveland Guardians, who have been the second-best baserunning team since 2014. Their baserunning guru, Sandy Alomar, “was pretty good,” Luplow says. But halfway through his first year in Arizona, Luplow — not exactly known for his speed — already has a career-high four steals.

“I don't know if anyone does it quite like McKay,” Luplow said. “He's pretty detailed.”

This week, his work paid off in a sweep of the Giants. Throughout the series, the Diamondbacks took extra bags and made all the right decisions on the basepaths.

Then, Wednesday night, when it was over, they got on a plane to Atlanta. For the four hours between Sky Harbor and Hartsfield-Jackson, McKay would do it all over again.

More pitchers to break down. More tendencies to spot. More film to watch.

Theo Mackie covers Arizona high school sports, the Arizona Diamondbacks and Phoenix Rising FC. He can be reached by email at theo.mackie@gannett.com and on Twitter @theo_mackie.