The Defense Thread, 2024

[DirtyBird]

12 minutes ago, Pickles said:

Might want to look at that again.  Urias had no time to square up, and thus attempted to backhand the ball.  It was a short hop, on a wet field, with an extremely fast runner.

Could he have made the play?  Sure.

Should he have made the play? Not imo.

And to me that's the bar for assigning an error.

The ball was only hit 78 mph. It was a pretty clear error.

[Pickles]

1 hour ago, DirtyBird said:

The ball was only hit 78 mph. It was a pretty clear error.

Clearly, exit velocity is hardly the only factor in the difficulty of making a play.

[DirtyBird]

5 minutes ago, Pickles said:

Clearly, exit velocity is hardly the only factor in the difficulty of making a play.

Your quote: "Urias had no time to square up, and thus attempted to backhand the ball."

 

[Pickles]

2 minutes ago, DirtyBird said:

Your quote: "Urias had no time to square up, and thus attempted to backhand the ball."

 

He didn't have time to square up and thus attempted to backhand the ball.

Go watch the play.  79 MPH exit velocity at 85 feet is less than a 0.10th of a second.

I don't believe it should have been called an E, and the MASN crew said the same exact thing.

[Frobby]

2 minutes ago, Pickles said:

He didn't have time to square up and thus attempted to backhand the ball.

Go watch the play.  79 MPH exit velocity at 85 feet is less than a 0.10th of a second.

I don't believe it should have been called an E, and the MASN crew said the same exact thing.

Your math is pretty terribly flawed.  79 mph at 85 feet takes a bit more than 0.7 seconds, not less than a tenth of a second.  

[Malike]

2 minutes ago, Frobby said:

Your math is pretty terribly flawed.  79 mph at 85 feet takes a bit more than 0.7 seconds, not less than a tenth of a second.  

He was playing in on the grass so I don't know if that skews the numbers at all. I do believe he should have made the play but he was playing in due to the speed of the batter iirc.

[Pickles]

5 minutes ago, Frobby said:

Your math is pretty terribly flawed.  79 mph at 85 feet takes a bit more than 0.7 seconds, not less than a tenth of a second.  

My bad.  I moved a decimal.

All I can say, is go watch the play.  He didn't have time to get in front of that ball, and the announcers were as surprised as I was it was an E.

People want to say it was questionable is fine by me.

Saying it was "clearly an error" or he "had time to get in front of it" are not dealing with reality.

[Frobby]

3 minutes ago, Malike said:

He was playing in on the grass so I don't know if that skews the numbers at all. I do believe he should have made the play but he was playing in due to the speed of the batter iirc.

He’s the one who used 85 feet.   Anyway, I’m not arguing who’s right or wrong about the play, I’m just correcting the math.   It takes about 0.4 seconds for a 90 mph pitch to travel 60 feet, so a 79 mph grounder clearly isn’t going 85 feet in less than a tenth of a second.  

[Malike]

Just now, Frobby said:

He’s the one who used 85 feet.   Anyway, I’m not arguing who’s right or wrong about the play, I’m just correcting the math.   It takes about 0.4 seconds for a 90 mph pitch to travel 60 feet, so a 79 mph grounder clearly isn’t going 85 feet in less than a tenth of a second.  

Yeah, my point was more to the fact that if he's playing in, he has even less time on a ball at 79 mph.

[sportsfan8703]

https://www.mlb.com/video/dean-kremer-in-play-no-out-to-maikel-garcia?q=PlayerId %3D%3D [602104] AND Season %3D [2024] Order By Timestamp DESC&cp=MIXED&p=0
 

Garcia can fly too. The ball just got on him really quick. Urias was drawn in. Not at error IMO after watching the video. 

[spleen1015]

Does it really matter?

[Malike]

It was a much more defensible outcome than Henderson's error. That is a play that should have been made.

[Malike]

4 hours ago, Aristotelian said:

Very fair. I actually missed the bloop. Where I still put it on Kimbrel is that he does nothing to hold runners and no longer has the swing and miss stuff to be able to completely ignore baserunners like Bautista.

He had more than 12K/9 last year and has 2 Ks in 1 inning this year. Bautista couldn't hold runners on at all, they ran at will. If Hays calls off Gunnar he easily makes that play and Kimbrel gets a save and nobody complains. 

[Hank Scorpio]

5 minutes ago, Malike said:

It was a much more defensible outcome than Henderson's error. That is a play that should have been made.

Neither of them were "Mckenna bad." 

[interloper]

2 minutes ago, Malike said:

He had more than 12K/9 last year and has 2 Ks in 1 inning this year. Bautista couldn't hold runners on at all, they ran at will. If Hays calls off Gunnar he easily makes that play and Kimbrel gets a save and nobody complains. 

The difference with Bautista is it doesn't matter because a strikeout is coming almost no matter what. That's why we won so many tie games on the road - he was a cheat code against the ghost runner rule. It just didn't really matter.