You play in or watch thousands of baseball games and you think you’ve seen everything … then you see Mariners’ shortstop Brendan Ryan leg out an infield single and wind up on third base, no thanks to any conceivably recordable error.
In the bottom of the first of tonight’s A’s/Mariners game, Ryan hit a ball off of Rich Harden toward the hole between short and third. A’s shortstop Eric Sogard ranged to his right and made a nice little play, but Ryan easily beat out the throw that bounced into first baseman Connor Jackson’s glove, who had to come off the bag.
Safe. No doubt, a hit. And first baseman Connor Jackson still held on to the ball in his glove.
That’s when things got crazy.
Ryan noticed nobody was covering second base, so he took off for it. He beat out Sogard, who was understandably still walking back to his position after the play’s momentum took him toward third, and also second baseman Jemile Weeks, who was heading toward first for some reason.
When Ryan pulled into second safely, he then noticed nobody was covering third, either, so he got extra scrappy and made a run at that, too. You can see in the video below, via MLB.com, that Coco Crisp came all the way in from center to help, but waved his arm in disgust once it became clear Ryan was going to wind up on third base with no play.
Here, just watch it:
So how the hell do you score that? The only way you really can without writing MENTAL-E three or four times:
Seems pretty complicated, but the extra two bases Ryan snagged was easily preventable.
Here’s what I imagine A’s interim skipper Bob Melvin will say after the game, though I’m sure the A’s players know exactly what went wrong and will be sure that something like it will never happen again:
Weeks, you’re our [expletive] second baseman. When our shortstop makes a play in the hole like that, you need to be covering, or at least around, second base. Our catcher (or even the right fielder) can back up the throw at first.
And that’s really how it should’ve been defended. Once Ryan got to second, and Sizemore was off the bag at third, because he was trying to pick up his teammates at second, the left fielder should’ve been sprinting in to cover third (if the pitcher wasn’t already there). No one’s innocent after Weeks blew his initial assignment.
As for the last time this kind of play has happened? I have no idea. Like the Mariners’ announcers, it reminded me of the hustle Johnny Damon showed in the 2009 World Series, but, if I’m not mistaken, he took third when nobody was covering after he stole second base.
As MLB’s Twitter page suggested, it’s hard to recall any play when a runner has advanced to third on his own batted ball that never left the infield. Sure, plays like what happened to Damon in the 2009 WS or even Enos Slaughter scoring from first on a single 65 years ago have happened before, but I can’t think of this specific play ever happening like this in the bigs before. Little Leagues, sure — I once touched them all on a bunt in Little League! But this can’t happen at the MLB level.
