Watch: Brewers pitcher shows crazy hustle, turns stumbling catch into an out
Baseball pitchers often get flack for not being as athletic as their hitting counterparts, but don’t let their long and lanky or soft and rotund physiques fool you.
Brent Suter of the Brewers surely fits into the former category as despite standing 6 feet 5 inches, Suter doesn’t even weigh 200 pounds.
But perhaps his slender physique enabled him to make one of MLB’s plays of the year on Wednesday vs. the Royals.
Alex Gordon hit a weak ground ball to the right side that would be nearly impossible for the first baseman to reach and still record an out.
You wouldn’t expect most pitchers to reach the grounder, either, but Brent Suter isn’t most pitchers. He made a diving stab at the ball, executed a perfect tumble that brought him toward first base and then made a diving tag at Gordon to record the out.
After the game Suter said his original intent was to toss the ball to the first baseman after he fielded the ball, but there was no first baseman to be found.
“I got it and I felt my body saying, ‘Roll and just flip it to [first baseman Jesus Aguilar],'” Suter said. “But I got up and saw that Aggy wasn’t there, so I just had to run and get him. It was kind of a blur, and it kind of knocked the wind out of me for a bit, but then my adrenaline came back. It was definitely one of those energy-expending plays, but I was happy I was able to make the out there.”
There was a delay after the play as trainers checked on Suter, but he did stay in the game and finished the inning.
“We just wanted to give him a little time,” manager Craig Counsell said.
“He dove on the ground twice, and the second fall was pretty hard, so just to make sure everything was OK. He knocked the wind out of himself just a little bit, but he was fine.”
Suter’s great defensive play brought back memories of other great plays by pitchers. These plays can come from pitchers in all shapes and sizes as Bartolo Colon showed back in 2015.
But perhaps the gold standard for pitcher defensive plays is the play made by Mark Buehrle in 2010. The former All-Star for the White Sox executed a kick save and diving between-the-legs toss punctuated by a barehanded grab by the Sox first baseman.
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Pitchers are athletes too, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise!
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