Explaining the Twins vs White Sox 4th Inning Out That Had Dick Bremer Perplexed

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Photo: Tony Dejak

Weird things happen in baseball, more than in any other sport. All of the rules (both spoken and not) that go into every single action on the field, make it a difficult game to follow. It’s also part of baseball’s genius. Today, the White Sox were in town against the Minnesota Twins, when the top of the 4th inning took a complicated turn.

Rich Hill suddenly lost all control of his breaking balls, which is all Rich Hill has. Subsequently, the bases were loaded and nobody was out. Then, this happened.

Ok… take a xanax and calm down. When confused by baseball rules, the best thing to do is to break it down step by step. Let’s start by setting the scene. The bases are loaded and there are ZERO outs. There. Scene set.

— A soft line drive is hit toward second base. Luis Arraez looks like he is going to catch it, but drops it. All runners freeze or go back to their bases of origin.

— Arraez picks the ball off the ground and flips to second base. Jorge Polanco catches the ball and touches 2nd base. That’s a force out (1st going to 2nd).

— Polanco throws to 1st base but the hitter has already made it to 1st so he is safe. Sano tags the runner between 1st and 2nd but he was the guy already out on the force by Polanco.

I explain it fully, here. I fucked up and said that Arraez caught it on a “one-hop”. As explained above, he dropped a line drive. Same rules apply.

Just Throw Home

Obviously, Arraez panicked a bit after he dropped the line drive. If he would have had his head on straight, he would have thrown home. All runners were retreating back to their original bags, so a 4-2-5-6 (2nd-Home-3rd-shortstop) triple play was there, as long as professionals were able to play catch without error.

Even if Polanco would have tagged the runner retreating back to 2nd base, after he touched 2nd, they would have gotten two outs on the play. Instead, there was one out and a lot of confusion.

Eric Strack | Minnesota Twins Fan

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