ALCS Game 3: Inside A Single Moment

First of all, if you are a Yankees hater (meaning that you are human), game 3 yesterday was nothing short of delectable. A roller coaster ride to be sure, one likely to be remembered for its 4 dramatic HRs — Judge then Stanton, Noel then Fry.

But to me what makes baseball such a great “talking sport” is that a game can turn on the subtlest of plays, and so let’s deconstruct a moment in the bottom of the 10th that may have played a big role in the ultimate outcome.

With one out, Bo Naylor stood at 2B when Steven Kwan hit a sad little comebacker to Clay Holmes. Naylor broke for 3B and to my eyes Holmes had him dead to rights, but you could kind of see, in real time, Holmes’ mind at work thinking “Take the sure out and just get the next guy...”

Had Holmes thrown Naylor out at 3B the Guardians would have been left with a runner at 1B and 2 outs. Had Naylor stayed put at 2B that’s where he would have been when David Fry came up. Instead he was at 3B, which doesn’t seem terribly significant if you know Fry hit a ball that would score a runner from any base anyway.

Here’s where it becomes fun to conjecture. With the winning run at 3B and 2 outs, Holmes could not afford to throw a wild pitch. But perhaps trusting his catcher or maybe just feeling he needed his full arsenal against Fry, Holmes didn’t scrap the slider.

What he did do, though, is hang the pitch for Fry to send deep into the night. You wonder, had Naylor been at 2B or had it been Kwan at 1B, might Holmes have buried a sinker or slider with less concern about spiking it?

Was the pitch’s location, and lack of bite, related to Naylor’s poor/daring/lucky/shrewd decision to break for 3B on Kwan’s comebacker, combined with Holmes’ conservative/foolish/sensible/misguided decision not to take what looked like an out at 3B?

We will never know for sure but it’s sure fun to ask the question, consider the possibilities, and then revel in the fact that regardless the Yankees snatched defeat from the jaws of victory and Cleveland still has a pulse.

Don’t forget to Vogt!