Watch: Twins Inexplicably Botch 3-Man Rundown - 'Little League Baseball at its Worst'
With the Little League World Series wrapping up this week, an MLB team decided to tip its hat to the youngsters by pulling out a play you would normally see performed by 12-year-olds.
Actually the little leaguers deserve more credit as they probably wouldn’t botch a play as badly as the Minnesota Twins did Wednesday.
Avisail Garcia of the Chicago White Sox came to bat in the bottom of the sixth with runners on first and third and no outs. He hit a sharp grounder to Twins third baseman Miguel Sano, who seemingly caught the third base runner in a sure-out rundown.
Except there are no sure things in baseball, and Minnesota somehow avoided getting anyone out despite having three Chicago players stranded between bases.
This is what it looks like to get bailed out of a TOOTBLAN. pic.twitter.com/uHRdjgb6k4
— Cut4 (@Cut4) August 22, 2018
“I’m just gonna call it like I see it. That’s Little League baseball right there at its worst,” said the White Sox color commentator.
“I’m not sure that’s good enough to be Little League baseball,” responded Chicago’s play-by-play man.
The third baseman Sano made the right play by chasing after the runner between third and home. He made a high throw to the catcher, Mitch Garver, who then ran toward third base, which had two White Sox players standing on it.
Ninety-nine percent of the time the fielding team would record at least one out in this situation, and some might even record two outs. The Twins, however, somehow recorded no outs as Garver let one of the runners run freely back to second base.
Making things even more confusing was the fact that there already was a runner on second base, who then had to retreat back to first base. Yet Garver just held onto the ball while standing at third and made no attempt to throw to second base (or first base) to record an out.
You could make the argument that he didn’t make a throw because he didn’t want the runner on third to take off for home, but that third base runner was probably frozen in fear of getting caught in yet another rundown. The chances of him taking off were extremely slim.
The batter Garcia, who ended up on first base, was credited with reaching base on a fielder’s choice so he wasn’t awarded a base hit on the play.
None of the Twins fielders was given an error on the play, but it’s likely the Twins’ analytics department assigned a mental error to Garver.
The play was so comically bad that the Twins pitching coach paid a visit to the mound afterward just to give everyone a minute to settle down.
Pitcher Matt Magill now had the bases loaded with no outs, yet somehow Minnesota was able to escape with a double play followed by a strikeout.
Amazingly, the White Sox didn’t have another player reach base after that play but still were able to hold on for a 7-3 win.
Truth and Accuracy
We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.
Advertise with The Western Journal and reach millions of highly engaged readers, while supporting our work. Advertise Today.
