Baseball is For Girly Men: Jays/As Coaching Flub
Apr 11th, 2008 by DrunkenMoose
Last night, the Blue Jays were playing the Oakland Athletics in extra innings. The Jays being the home team, they of course only needed to score one run to win. They ultimately lost, but not before a play where they demonstrated a universal rule of baseball that every coach from Little League to the MLB uses and in so doing proved that baseball is for girly men.
Here is the situation: Bottom of the 11th (or 10th?), they have 1 out and runners on 1st and 2nd. The batter hits a blooper into the shallow outfield. What do you as a coach tell the runners?
Hold! Hold! HOLD!! (See photo)
Of course you do, because your sixth grade gym teacher read it in a book.
This is why baseball is for girly men (see Arnold for a counter example).
The fact is, sports involve risk and had the coaches waved the runners to go there were two possible outcomes: he catches it, tosses to a base and ends the inning. Or he misses it, Jays win.
Who wouldn’t risk an inning ending double play for a shot at certain victory? A girly man!
The other outcome is the runners on 1st and 2nd hold close and then dart if it falls in. The result if it does? The runner at second gets tossed out, you have 1st and 3rd with two out. Or, they’re all safe (unlikely) and you have the bases loaded with 1 out. Keep in mind, the Jays only needed one run.
Ultimately, they played it safe, the guy got caught at 2nd and then Frank Thomas struck out to end the inning. Sure, they could have won with another base hit, or they would have ironically won had they had two out for the blooper, but these things don’t matter. They should have rolled the dice and gone for victory. The upside of loading the bases was less relevant than having two out. Had they had 1 out, they could have sack flied and that is the logical play, but they didn’t, because the Road Runner was not at first base waiting to go.
So Thomas stikes out, the inning ends, no one scores and the Jays lose in 12.
They should have run, taken the risk and grabbed the victory.
Good job Manager McNoBalls.