Walk Off a Hero (By the Seat of One’s Pants)

This play was a very aggressive send that almost didn’t work because it sounds like Cody Bellinger stumbled rounding third and wasn’t running as well as he could:

You can see that catcher and runner got to the plate pretty much simultaneously, and as the commentary suggests, the umpire was ready to call Bellinger out except the ball rolled away. They did review it, but the safe call was confirmed.

Naturally we must also give credit to the pitching for allowing the Cubs to win with just that one walkoff run:

Perhaps one day he will stumble, but that day is not today.

41 thoughts on “Walk Off a Hero (By the Seat of One’s Pants)”

  1. andcounting,

    andcounting:
    I don’t know how you pitch to Morel there.

    I sorta get it because he was down two strikes (count was full I believe) but if I weren’t going to seriously challenge him I would not have thrown the pitch that was thrown, that was pretty fat

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  2. That Fernando start to his career was such a definitive benchmark for rookie pitchers. It’s insane to see Imanaga’s name above his on that leaderboard. He’s so much fun.

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  3. Rice Cube,

    From the very start, just put him on. If that were my team I’d be furious because Suzuki, Bellinger and Morel are the only hitters in the lineup that I’m concerned about beating me. First base open and a chance to put those three bats in the rearview? Done and done, no hesitation, every time.

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  5. Rice Cube,

    (dying laughing) It genuinely is. He’s a decent hitter, an annoying hitter, and a super tough out. But I’m not like. “Oh shit, anyone but Tauchman.”

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  6. So I was talking with some folks who knew the rule better than I, the Pirates catcher’s mistake after he may or may not have made the initial tag on time was taking the ball out of the glove to allow it to be knocked away. Cody knocked it away on the follow through of the slide so it was incidental contact and he did not go full A-Rod so that did allow the call to be made and confirmed. Life goes on.

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  7. Rice Cube,

    The MLB rule book doesn’t mention it, but the umpire manual does:

    While contact may occur between a fielder and runner during a tag attempt, a runner is not allowed to use his hands or arms to commit an obviously malicious or unsportsmanlike act – such as grabbing, tackling, intentionally slapping at the baseball, punching, kicking, flagrantly using his arms or forearms, etc. – to commit an intentional act of interference unrelated to running the bases

    The catcher put the ball in his face in the process of tagging him and he knocked it out of his hand. People are acting like you’re just not allowed to touch the ball, ignoring the “unsportsmanlike, maliciously, flagrantly” language that makes it clear we’re talking about going out of your natural running/sliding motion to do something dirty. It’s not JUST intentionality, it’s the obvious over-the-top, yes, A-ROD shit they’re going to call. It’s silly to even consider Belli’s act anything of the sort.

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  10. Rice Cube,

    It’s actually deceptive. When the video gets to the part about “willful and deliberate” and different kinds of interference, none of those situations apply to breaking up a tag play. That’s not interference, so the whole notion that the “interference” wasn’t reviewable is nonsense because interference wasn’t in play.

    While I’m hesitant to cite the wording in the umpire’s manual, that WAS the wording cited by the umpires when they justified the call against A-Rod way back when. They specifically said it referred to flagrantly malicious or unsportsmanlike” motion with the arms, not “willful and deliberate” which is the interference wording. I just think they get that wrong in the explanation, because, again, none of those examples refer to tag plays.

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  11. andcounting,

    I’ve spent way too long on this, but I might as well add that it’s just weird that the video plays out the way it does. She states pretty early on that the legality of intentionally knocking the ball out of someone’s hands on a tag play isn’t covered in the minutia of the rulebook, and then she lists all the rules about interference (all of which apply to interfering with a fielder’s ability to make a play in which the member of the offensive team is not involved) in other situations. Then she goes right on listing the wording of those interference rules as if we can magically make them apply to this other situation that is nowhere described or defined as interference. Then trying to say they can’t review that part of the play because interference (which no one is accusing Bellinger of doing) isn’t reviewable? Ugh, it pisses me off.

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  14. Rice Cube,

    Exactly! (dying laughing) it really is that simple, but I have become obsessed with why people want it to be more complicated than that. (dying laughing).

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  15. andcounting,

    It is kinda fun to think about why the rules allow him to be safe, I do think it should probably be better clarified so we don’t have the football issues with “what is a catch” after they had to deal with some tuck rule

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  17. Rice Cube,

    Here’s how I see it: we know what we don’t want. Baseball doesn’t want what A-Rod did (he hacked Arroyo’s arm, not even the ball/glove with a move that occurred completely out of his running lane …he just hit the dude like a psycho) or what Pete Rose did or what happened to Buster Posey. It really comes down to safety and sportsmanship: that’s the reason we need rule clarification.

    The rules don’t make contact illegal, they attempt to eliminate unsafe, unsportsmanlike, unnecessary contact. It’s like, “Don’t be a dick, but you still have to compete. The catcher has to hold on to the ball. Tale as old as time. But the runner can’t try to kill him or be a total jackass. The catcher dropped the ball because he was careless with the ball, that’s the bottom line. Catchers know better.

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  19. I did think of that climactic play in League of Their Own where she ran over her sister to score the winning run (you can’t do that anymore obviously) but Bellinger was nowhere close to that and the ball still got loose, so that seems more of a catcher faux pas than umpires screwing up

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  25. Even if you needed to homer for it to be considered a hit, Suwinski would be batting .667 against Taillon for his career.

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  28. Rice Cube,

    (dying laughing) no, the umpire seemed to mysteriously overturn his own HBP call and the Cubs had to challenge it to go back to the initial HBP call. Then the Pirates manager argued for some reason.

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