Last night, the Phillies were down 4-3 in the bottom of the 9th inning, with 2 outs. They had runners on 1st and 2nd (Bruntlett at 2nd and Ruiz at 1st) with Jimmy Rollins at bat.
Rollins smacked a line drive into the right-center gap, all the way to the wall. With 2 outs, both runners scored easily. There was no throw from the cutoff man.
After he hit the ball, Rollins ran past 1st base, breezed past 2nd base and dashed for 3rd. Why? I think he should have stopped at 1st. Why take a chance of getting thrown out before Ruiz makes it home? I can even understand running to 2nd. Since there was virtually no chance of getting thrown out before 2nd base, it would take away 1 force play at 2nd base, should Ruiz stop at 3rd. But there was no reason to go past 2nd base. Agreed?
A similar thought occurred to me, but it doesn’t really matter. The winning run scored shortly after Rollins touched 2nd – since he’d already touched 1st base at that point, game over. He didn’t have to reach 3rd (or any other base) safely.
If anything, he’d serve as a distraction. If the outfielder decides to throw to second, Rollins can try to get caught in a rundown, letting the runners score easily. (However, I didn’t see the play.)
With the winning run on the way to the plate they were not going to trouble themselves to get an out that would be meaningless the moment the runner scored.
i didn’ t see the play, but with two outs, the runner from first is going to be off with contact, so by the time the batter reaches second, the runner is going to have scored or be awful close. Unless the runner falls down or something, even a really, really, really slow runner is going to score way before the batter reaches third base, so even if the batter gets tagged at third, the game is already over.
Now whether the batter should even try for second is a better question, and I think the answer is no. There is a real (not huge, but real) possibility of getting tagged at second before the second runner scores. And there’s no actual benefit (OK, two theoretical benefits, neither of which will ever happen (1. Distracts outfielder from making what would have been successful throw to the plate, yet the easier throw to second is not successful; 2. Runner is held at third and next batter hits ball that somehow would have created a force-out at second but doesn’t get the out at first)).
Of course, I don’t blame the batter too much for not making the calculations in the heat of the moment, and given that he went to third, taking second base was probably a pretty safe move.
It’s true he didn’t have to run to second, but the ball hit the right-center field wall and died. He ran basically because he could, Rollins is our fastest runner.
From watching the replays this morning, he was about to reach 2nd base before they had even gotten to the ball. He was rounding second by the time the outfielder had planted his feet to throw the ball in. Ruiz was pretty much crossing the plate at that exact moment anyways.
If there was no one on base, and he hit a ball like that again, it would’ve been an easy stand up triple for him.
In such a situation the batter-runner usually keeps running just because it serves to distract the defense; they may err and try to get the batter-runner instead of the winning run. Theoretically if you tag the batter-runner before the winning run scores you prevent that run, but getting the batter-runner will almost always allow the run to score first, so it’s a good percentage play.
Distract the defense? This is true for most of the game, but not in the bottom of the 9th. Major league defenses would not be distracted in the slightest by an irrelevant runner when the winning run is about to score. If anything, the Dodger defense should have recognized that they had no chance of getting Ruiz (since he was running at the crack of the bat) at the plate, and should have tried to at least catch Rollins on the bases before Ruiz scored.
I don’t buy this at all. I think it’s simply a situation like in the NFL on that Stokley play earlier in the season where he ran laterally to the endzone before scoring to burn clock. The smart thing to do is to stay close to the bag at 1st and ensure you aren’t the final out, but 99.9% of players let their enthusiasm for making a huge play get the better of them and run to second (score the TD right away) when doing something unconventional like staying at first (burning an extra 2 or 3 seconds off the clock) would be ever so slightly smarter. Since the likelihood of either situation making a difference is so incredibly slim it’s rarely discussed or emphasized.
I’ve never seen #1 happen in the major leagues, to be honest. And it doesn’t apply in this case; Rollins did not hit a single, he hit a very easy double.
What?!?! You’ve never seen a player tagged out at second base as a runner was about to slide into home? I call bullshit or else it’s high time we revoke your baseball fandom.
Amen Omni. Someone on the Red Sox did exactly that this year (may have been nailed at 3rd not 2nd albeit), and boy my fellow Sox fans were sorely pissed. Wasn’t the winning run, but was the go-ahead run IIRC.
Rollins probably should have stopped running, but with the winning run about to cross the plate, there was no chance the Dodgers were going to be thinking about him instead of Ruiz.
It just happened in Game 2 of the Twins-Yankees Divisional Playoff series. Carlos Gomez rounded 2nd and was tagged out before a Twins runner scored (who would have scored easily). This blunder cost the Twins a 1-1 series tie.
This is so common that smart defenses, recognizing that they have no shot at getting the runner at home, will often throw behind a trailing baserunner who is known to be aggressive.
I can’t believe that there is even a debate here. My point in starting the thread was to point out something that no one pointed out after the game, on TBS or the sports networks. Rollins had no business even rounding 1st base. Running to first, he had a clear view of the field and should have known that Ruiz was going to score with ease. He was either clueless about the situation or was trying to pad his stats. Knowing a bit about Rollins, I think it was the former.