Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) This Week, June 28

Welcome to another edition of Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) This Week. The parenthetical part of the title is largely just a nod to Zach Lowe, whose ESPN basketball column inspired this one. He occasionally mentions flaws or foibles holding a particular team or player back, in lovingly GIF’ed up detail. I’m more of a rah-rah type, and plenty of weeks I don’t have a single Didn’t Like in the column at all. This week, though, I can’t help it; mental lapses, baserunning errors, and overall sloppiness are all over the column. That’s not to say I don’t love watching it, because part of what’s fun about baseball is when a theoretically staid game gets messy, but let’s be clear: A lot of these plays are not good plays. We’ve got superstars getting confused, on-field collisions, and absolute howlers. Let’s get started.

1. The Profligate Nationals
The Nats are one of the unheralded fun stories of the baseball season. They’re hanging around .500 and playing like better days are ahead. CJ Abrams and MacKenzie Gore look like franchise mainstays. James Wood, another part of the return from the Juan Soto trade, isn’t far off. Mitchell Parker and Jake Irvin might be mid-rotation starters. Jacob Young is an elite defender. They have plenty of interesting role players, and the whole team plays with reckless and joyful abandon.

That’s particularly true on the basepaths, where the Nats rank third in steals but only 11th in total baserunning value. They’re always angling for how to advance another base, whatever the costs. Sometimes that ends in tears.

When they faced off with the woeful Rockies in Denver this week, fireworks were a certainty. But the Nats tried their best to give away some of their offense. First, Abrams grabbed a handful of glove instead of base:

Hey, bad luck, that could happen to anyone. But then Nick Senzel, theoretically an elder statesman on the team, got lost between second and third at an inopportune time:

That was a heads up defensive play, but still! It’s one thing to get thrown out on a close play contesting a valuable base, and another to wander into an inning-ender.

All the baserunning blunders in the world weren’t going to stop Washington from winning that game; they poured it on inning after inning and won 11-5. But the next day’s over-exuberance proved more costly. First Eddie Rosario tried for a little too much against Nolan Jones:

In the seventh, Abrams got a poor jump and couldn’t quite bail himself out with pure speed:

Later in the same inning, Lane Thomas also came up short:

The Nationals still scored seven runs, but they needed a few more. This game is the one that ended in a walk-off pitch clock violation, but it didn’t have to get to that point. Over-exuberant baserunning turned that game from a laugher into a close contest, and Kyle Finnegan did the rest.

To be honest with you, part of what’s been so fun about watching these Nats is the same thing that’s maddening about watching them. It’s hard to knock them for running into outs when they’re also running into steals and hustle doubles. This isn’t so much a criticism as a statement of fact. The Nationals run too much, for better or worse.

2. Juan Soto’s Befuddlement
It’s no secret that I’m a huge Juan Soto fan. I love the way he holds court at home plate, the feeling that pitchers are asking him questions to a test that he has all the answers to, and his delightful antics throughout the plate appearance. The shuffle, the grimace, the appreciative nod; you can almost see the gears turning as he works his way into an advantageous count and then unloads on just the pitch he was waiting for.

That’s the ideal Soto plate appearance. I’m here to talk about one that was decidedly not that. First, David Peterson got called for a pitch timer violation:

Spotting Soto a free ball is a terrible idea. It got worse (or better if you’re into hilarious post-pitch stretching) from there:

That’s not so much a shuffle as a straddle. In case you can’t remember what his normal post-take behavior looks like, here’s the 2-0 pitch:

You probably know what comes next. On 3-0 counts, Soto picks one area to look for and lays in wait. If he doesn’t get it, he just moves on to the next pitch. But this time was different:

Uh, what? I truly didn’t expect to see that. Sure, the pitch was a strike, but why was he trying to bunt? The ideal outcome when bunting is reaching first base and advancing the runner, but he’s Juan Soto! A walk accomplishes that just as well, and the odds of a walk are high indeed when Soto gets this far ahead in the count. It’s not that he’s a bad bunter – he’s six for his last seven in terms of converting bunts into hits – but this was not the count for that tactic.

That bizarre choice seemed to give Peterson new life. He promptly poured in a perfect strike, which Soto acknowledged with a fun little lean:

That brought up the payoff pitch, and just like you’d expect, Soto managed to work the walk. The only thing was, he didn’t know it:

That’s a sight I never thought I’d see: Soto not realizing that he’d walked. How many times do you think an umpire has had to urge him to take his free base?

This makes the bunt attempt make a little more sense, at least. Soto likely got the count mixed up because of the first-pitch clock violation. If he thought he was ahead 2-0 instead of 3-0, a bunt makes at least a little more sense. It was still a befuddling sequence, though. Naturally, he put that nonsense behind him and racked up another walk and a homer in the game. Soto is rarely confused – but even when he is, he usually gets the job done.

3. Shohei Touches Them All
Some things are just meme-worthy. It doesn’t even have to be deep, I guess. What more can I say about this one? The rules of baseball say that you have to touch all the bases in order to score, whether you’re advancing the regular way or trotting around after a home run. Every baseball player knows that rule. Very rarely do they almost forget it:

Obviously, Shohei Ohtani is no stranger to home runs. What could short-circuit his brain so much that he forgot how to behave after hitting one? First, he didn’t think he got all of it:

That’s not a pain grimace, it’s an “oh no that ball isn’t going to get out” grimace. That trot was a combination of courtesy run and cliffhanger viewing. He even kept the bat in his hand in case he was going to head back to the dugout with it. He sometimes does that on fly balls where there’s no question of needing to sprint. It’s another little Ohtani idiosyncrasy, like warning the dugout when he hits a foul ball their way.

This time, he realized right around first base that he hit a home run. That meant it was time to throw the bat away and switch into a home run trot. He turned to apologize to the first base coach for dropping the bat in fair territory, because he’d carried it too far while watching the ball:

Then his instincts kicked in and told him something was amiss. It’s a strange place to be with a bat. How did he get there? What else must have gotten out of sequence to end up in this spot? He surmised that missing first base was on the table – I can’t tell if someone was yelling at him to go back or not – and so went back to seal the deal. But plot twist – he did touch it the first time:

What a guy. It’s very like Ohtani to have his mistake be not trusting himself to do everything right in the first place. He was appropriately chagrined in the dugout afterward:

Bonus Ohtani home run content: I absolutely loved Erick Fedde’s reaction to this clobbered leadoff job. I’d do the exact same thing in his situation:

4. Those Woeful White Sox
I hate to kick a team when it’s down, but you can’t give an honest accounting of baseball this year without mentioning the plight of the South Siders. Last Friday, they found themselves locked in a pitching duel as Fedde and Jack Flaherty exchanged efficient innings. Fedde ended up going seven innings and only allowing two runs. Flaherty got into a little trouble in the third inning, and then he made a big mistake. He grooved a two-strike fastball to Luis Robert Jr., one of the most aggressive hitters in baseball. Improbably, Robert just watched it fly by for a called strike three:

You can see that Robert never even started his swing. Something happened during his load, and he just left his foot hanging there, not tracking the pitch, until it was far too late to swing. He’d given up on the pitch. What happened? He saw Tommy Pham get the most outrageous jump you can imagine:

You know it’s a good jump when you can stutter step, slow to a trot, and still beat the throw standing up. Clearly, Robert’s instincts just overrode his brain there. He saw his teammate get the best lead in baseball history and thought, “Whatever I do, I can’t foul the ball off here.” That’s as automatic as a steal gets. Robert swinging could only interfere with it. But you can’t do that with two strikes. There are two strikes!

That’s an error of good intentions – Robert’s heart was in the right place, but his instincts were too absolute. However, the Sox ended the game with one that was more emblematic of the way this season has been going. Paul DeJong got hit by a pitch with one out in the ninth inning, putting the tying run on base. Andrew Benintendi came into the game as a pinch hitter and flied out harmlessly to center:

That was the last play of the game. Yes, there was only one out. No, it wasn’t suspended due to weather, despite the fact that a lightning warning had cleared out most of the fans already. DeJong just forgot how many outs there were:

There’s no sugarcoating that one. It’s just a mental mistake. That’s what happens when you’re winning a third of your games and making a run at the all-time losses record. It’s tough out there right now.

5. A Novel Anti-Theft Technique
The Giants have a glaring defensive problem. They’ve allowed 88 stolen bases this year, the most in the majors by a dozen. Patrick Bailey is an elite throwing catcher – 96th percentile for pop time and 97th for caught stealing runs above average – but opponents are getting such good jumps that it doesn’t matter. Just last week, in fact, the Cubs double stole San Francisco into submission with a barrage of freely taken bases and outrageous jumps.

In this week’s rematch, the Giants weren’t going to take it sitting down. They clearly came into the series with a plan – they’d try pickoff throws and back picks as often as possible to disrupt Chicago’s timing on the bases. This seems over the top, though:

Matt Chapman is built like a linebacker. He’s 215 pounds of pure muscle, and I’m pretty sure that no one on the Cubs is interested in colliding with him in the open field. Ian Happ is plenty strong himself, but that’s a big guy coming right at him. Not only was Happ out by a mile, but his slide narrowly escaped Chapman coming straight at him:

Rogers’ initial move was to second, because that’s where you pick off a runner on second. But Happ was bouncing into his secondary lead, with his momentum carrying him away from safety, when Rogers spun. He had no choice but to make a break for third base. It was a smart attempt to make the best of a bad situation. Often enough, the third baseman can’t get there in time, or the pitcher tosses the ball away trying to throw to a moving target.

That’s a deceptively tough play for Chapman. He was stationed far off the bag, because who in their right mind would steal third with two outs? He had to charge the bag, keep himself in position to receive a throw, and tag Happ without losing control of the ball. That meant a collision, because there was no way for both get to third in time and throttle to a stop. It was an action play, and Chapman was ready for it:

That’s spectacular defense, exactly what you’d expect from Chapman. It’s a caught stealing you don’t see every day – technically not a pickoff, what with Happ taking off for third and all. The Giants also threw out Christopher Morel on an overly optimistic attempt to stretch a single into a double and later retired him again on a back pick at first base. They’re doing everything they can to slow opposing speedsters. You might steal on the Giants – but you might also get the insult and the injury when Matt Chapman full-contact tags you out at third.