But you do gain. The chance of either a harmless out or the same outcome (D’Arnaud out but Murphy scores) is IMO a lot greater than the chance of D’Arnaud reaching safely in that situation.
Still, the most compelling argument to me is that if you froze time just as that ball leaves D’Arnaud’s bat, and then polled the Mets and all their fans about what they would want to happen, the overwhelming majority say take the run and the out. I think you’d be out of your mind to say, “No, I like D’Arnaud’s chances of doing some REAL damage – let it drop foul and let’s see what he can do with an 0-2 count against Greinke.”
I have no problem with it…the Giants celebrated 4 different times last year (5 if you count the ‘celebration’ when they clinched the second wild-card spot, but I don’t recall any champagne for that one). Why shouldn’t the team celebrate?
Of course the Mets would take the sac fly. That doesn’t make it a bad play for the Dodgers. Anytime you, on defense, have a man on 3rd with less than 2 outs in the 4th, it’s acceptable to limit the damage to one run.
No reason why it should be any different. In fact, it’s likely that D’Arnaud would have shortened his swing and gone for a grounder to second base, which would have scored the run anyway.
Sure, Mets fans loved it, but that doesn’t make it a good idea. Outs are good for the defense. You just don’t know what happens if you give a batter another swing.
Heck, if Ethier had camped under the ball and dropped it, it would have been scored an error since it extended the time at bat, even though Murphy couldn’t have scored.
Also, high fly balls tend to carry in funny ways. He had to stay with the play to catch it - drifting only at the end into foul territory - and of course couldn’t look down to see where the chalk line was near his feet without taking his eye off the ball.
If he ran towards the line, decided to let it fall, and it somehow dropped right on the line or just inside it for a pop fly double, he’d have rightfully been crucified (figuratively) for such a cavalier attitude.
Nope. Rule 10.14e
e) No error shall be charged against any fielder who permits a foul fly to fall safe with a runner on third base before two are out, if in the scorer’s judgment the fielder deliberately refuses the catch in order that the runner on third shall not score after the catch.
It’s hard to believe how useless Troy Tulowitzki has been for the Blue Jays. He’s not just a Coors Field product, either. While he’s had some crazy good home stats, his road stats have been excellent as well.
He was pretty bad before the injury, but has taken it to a new low since then. I was infuriated by that at-bat where he struck out on three fastballs looking with two on and two outs. He’s pretty much an automatic out right now. Fortunately Martin draws back into the lineup now, but Encarnacion is a question mark with a recurrence of a finger injury that’s been bothering him since July.
That was a truly amateurish at bat. Tulowitzski is obviously hurt to the point they’d be better off with Pennington playing in his place and Kawasaki on the roster. God bless him but his shoulder is messed up. Pennington and Kawasaki are quadruple A players but they’re better than this.
I mean I am not overreacting to them losing Game 1; hell, the way they come back it barely bothers me and theyd have lost with Honus Wagner at short. Tulo was awful in the ALDS too, despite the home run, and you can see his shoulder bothers him. He’s sixty percent at best, and sixty percent makes him maybe the 65th best player in the Jays organization.
That Mets fans wanted him to catch the ball doesn’t make it a bad play for the Dodgers, but it’s a very good indication that it is a bad play. A baseball game is zero sum: if something is good for the Mets, that means it’s bad for the Dodgers in equal measure. And our gut (along with the numbers and history) suggests that not letting the ball drop was good for the Mets. We know intuitively that this is so, and I see no reason to think we’re wrong in this case.
That’s not to say it isn’t understandable (or even expected) for Ethier to take the out, but strictly speaking it was a mistake.