Back to Back to Back Plays Cost the Bay Rays A Game

Jose Bautista had a legendary game. Bautista hit a triple, a double and a homer and went three for three with two walks and four runs scored. The Blue Jays' best player certainly helped win the game for the Blue Jays. Those last two walks cost him the cycle as all he needed was a single. But it was that first walk and his luck that followed that cost the Bay Rays the game and turned things around for the Blue Jays.

The Toronto crowd was on their feet when Bautista came up in the eighth inning. Not only was the hometown crowd hoping Bautista would do something about the 4-3 deficit that Blue Jays faced, but they knew he just needed a single. But as @TaoofStieb said on Twitter, they would have gladly traded the single for a patented JoBau homer. They got neither. Joel Peralta came in to pitch the eighth for the Bay Rays and he'd been very effective so far this season. He pitches almost exactly like a pudgier Francisco Rodriguez, the Mets' closer.

Peralta didn't want anything to do with Bautista and walked him. The crowd booed lustily. Adam Lind came up next and appeared to have like a ninety pitch at bat. Peralta got behind and then Lind fouled pitch after pitch. Finally, Peralta got Lind to ground hard to first baseman, Dan Johnson. There are two things you need to know about Dan Johnson. The first of which is that in part time duty, he has batted under .200 for three straight seasons and is currently batting .121. The second is that, though his numbers aren't bad over at first defensively, he's never played there full time. Johnson fielded the ball close to first and stepped on the bag and then threw to second to try to get Bautista. Johnson had plenty of time, but the ball sailed a little bit and ended up hitting Bautista in the back. JoBau was safe.

The announcers in the game went on and on about how Johnson should have gone to second right away and not stepped on first to begin the play. The Fan doesn't agree with that at all. Johnson was two feet from the bag when he caught the grounder. Big league first basemen have been making that play for a hundred years. All Johnson had to do was throw the ball on the shortstop side of second and Bautista would have been out by a mile. Johnson didn't and Bautista was safe. For those of you wondering, Bautista was not out of the base line while running to second. It was simply a bad throw from Johnson.

So now the tying run was on second with only one out in a one run game. There should have been two outs with nobody on base. What happened next proved that this was Bautista's day and cost the Bay Rays the game. JoBau was trying to get a good lead so he could score on a single. The Bay Rays knew that and Sean Rodriguez sneaked in behind Bautista, opened his glove to give the signal and Peralta whirled and delivered a perfect pickoff throw. Bautista was a dead duck except Sean Rodriguez failed to catch the ball. It hit the webbing of his glove and bounced a few feet behind him. Seriously, Bautista would have been dead in the water, hung out to dry or any other cliche you feel like coming up with. But there he was still on second twice after he should have been out.

Edwin Encarnacion was up next and hit the ball over Zobrist's head in right field. It appeared that Zobrist had broken in first before trying to retreat to catch the ball. He couldn't catch up to it. Perhaps if Fuld had been back there, it would have been an out (#LegendofSamFuld). but the double scored the charmed Jose Bautista and that tied the game at four. The Blue Jays eventually won the game when John McDonald, who was only in the game because Nix was injured earlier in the game, hit a walk-off homer scoring Woodward, who was running for Juan Rivera, who finally got a hit while batting .089. Talk about an unwieldy sentence that described an improbable event!

But the game turned on those two plays on Bautista at second. No errors are recorded in the score book. You never assume a double play, so Dan Johnson didn't receive an error for hitting Bautista in the back. And Sean Rodriguez didn't get an error for dropping that pickoff throw. Zobrist didn't get an error for breaking in on a ball over his head and yet all of those things were plays the Bay Rays could have made to make the outcome turn out differently than they did. But that's the way it goes in baseball sometimes.

One other note about this game. Felipe Lopez, who has worn out his welcome in several cities before making his way to Tampa, went 0-5 in the game with two strikeouts. But it was his last at bat that will be his last for the Bay Rays. We are talking about a tie game here that both teams wanted to win. In the top of the eleventh inning, Lopez hit a routine grounder to second and loafed toward first. It turns out that McDonald booted the ball. But Lopez didn't hustle and that gave McDonald time to recover and throw him out. Joe Maddon pulled Lopez from the game after that. Look for Lopez on the waiver wire today.

Does Flexibility like Prado and Zobrist Really Help?

Peter Gammons wrote an article over at MLB.com that basically says that players that are flexible should be rewarded for their flexibility and that this flexibility should be trained in the minor leagues. The article just doesn't sit right. The obvious examples used were Martin Prado of the Braves, Ben Zobrist of the Bay Rays as well as several other members of the Bay Rays' team. The Fan is fully cognizant that this writer isn't great at coming up with answers. But perhaps there is some value in raising the question for others to answer. Does flexibility really help a team and a player?

Let's take a guy like Martin Prado. The value in Prado's flexibility is not that he can field so many positions. His value lies in the fact that he is a productive hitter. Prado hasn't scored that well in defensive metrics for any of the multiple positions he has played. Baseball-reference.com gave Prado a -0.8 dWAR in 2010. That's not a good score at all. So would Prado's value be the same if he just played one position instead of five? That question will be answered this year if Chipper Jones stays healthy and Prado remains in left field.

Another example Gammons uses is Ben Zobrist. Zobrist played seven different positions in 2010. His defensive metrics were only on the positive side for fielding in right field and first base. All his other positions ended up in negative defensive statistics. And Zobrist did not have near the same kind of offensive season in 2010 that he did in 2009. And so the question has to be asked if Zobrist would be more valuable in one place than in seven?

The Bay Rays as a rule get high marks for their flexibility. But you have to notice that their most valuable players last year stayed in one position: Carl Crawford and Evan Longoria. Both were among the best with the glove in the league for their positions and both were near the top of the league in WAR. All those guys they have that move around so much didn't fare nearly as well.

There has been a lot of talk in recent years about practice. The Fan can't recall the number, but the theories say that you have to take a certain amount of reps at any given task to master it. Can you do that when you are playing 40 games at second, 30 games at third, 20 games at first and the rest of the time in the outfield? And after a while, does all the concentration it takes to play all those positions take away some of the edge when batting? The Fan doesn't know, but again, poses the questions. It just doesn't sit right though.

Reid Brignac is a brilliant shortstop. If you leave him alone at short for 155 games, he's going to come close to leading the league in defensive metrics. Does playing the flexibility card and sitting Brignac in certain situations (against lefties for one) help the team or hurt it? You end up with fifty games with a lessor fielder at short (such as Rodriguez or whomever). Brignac will never learn how to hit against lefties without the reps and so you might not get as much value from him due to the flexibility carte blanche that is given Joe Maddon. It seems to this observer that the most value Brignac can bring is to put him at short every game and take your chances.

It will be interesting to see where this trend goes. The players obviously don't like it. Bill Hall went to Houston because he was tired of playing all over the field. Sean Rodriguez of the Bay Rays has said he wants to play just one position. And who can blame them? There is something to be said for the comfort of staying in one place and getting the reps there every day.

The Fan has raised the questions. Make of it what you will. Hopefully someone with analytic chops will take hold of them and give us an intelligent answer that the Fan can't. The gut--that faultiest of all organs--says that it hurts a team and a player more than it helps them. What say you?