12/21/24
July 26, 2015
SportsFilter: The Sunday Huddle:
A place to discuss the sports stories that aren't making news, share links that aren't quite front-page material, and diagram plays on your hand. Remember to count to five Mississippi before commenting in anger.
Knives in Toronto are already out for Lou Lamoriello.
Yawn. That's just the Toronto media doing their usual thing with the Maple Leafs. It's July, and they need to write SOMETHING to draw eyeballs.
posted by grum@work at 11:13 PM on July 26, 2015
Damn, some strange plays in the MLB these days. Check out this weird triple play by the Mariners today. The nature of it is not unheard of, but at this level it always surprises me when you see a base-running gaffe like this (or the delayed reaction of the players/coaches to what happened). You can see it develop, too: no outs, Pillar on First and Carrera on third. Batter hits a routine dribbler down to first, he's out; it was quick enough that Pillar on first didn't make it to second, so they get him in a rundown... but then notice Carrera trying to sneak home from third so they throw the ball to the catcher to run him back.
Meanwhile, Pillar correctly takes that moment to easily progress to second and then- seeing the rundown between third and home- wrongly tries to advance to third, which he does easily. Unfortunately, Carrera had scampered back to third just after, so the catcher promptly tags both players. Pillar is immediately out, since the lead runner has rights to the bag, but in the confusion Carrera seems to get panicky as if not sure if he should try running home again (to make Pillar safe I guess?), stumbles off the bag, and is promptly tagged again for the third out.
If you watch carefully, the third base coach was unforgivably asleep at the wheel; he barely was watching Carrera's rundown, staring right at second, and yet did not wave Pillar back. Pillar should have known better, but Luis River had literally one job, and he screwed it up. It's giving me flashbacks to the days of Red Sox 3B coach Wendell Kim sending valuable baserunners to their doom.
posted by hincandenza at 02:59 AM on July 27, 2015
I'm not sure that Pillar did the wrong thing there.
I think you assume that the runner is going to get caught in the rundown between 3rd/home, so you take 3rd on your own to make sure that the lead baserunner is there when the play ends.
If Carrera is caught in the rundown, you have a man on 3rd with two outs.
If Carrera retreats to 3rd and Pillar is already there, you have a man on 3rd with two outs.
What you don't expect is a rundown that fails to get the runner AND a professional baseball player getting the jimmy-legs standing on third and falling off the bag.
Yes, if Pillar had stopped on 2nd, life would be much easier, but I got the impression the rundown between 3rd/home was aborted when they saw Pillar on 3rd, because they are going to get their 2nd out no matter what if Carrera retreats to 3rd, so why chance it by throwing the ball away. If Pillar is still standing on 2nd, I'm pretty sure that they get Carrera in the rundown.
posted by grum@work at 10:53 AM on July 27, 2015
Knives in Toronto are already out for Lou Lamoriello.
Something, something, popcorn.