The Anatomy of a Baseball Defense Miracle

[Matthew Trueblood]

Brewers manager Pat Murphy noted that the way the ball was hit on the final play of Sunday's win over the Reds made the out the team's defense manufactured especially impressive. He was on the money.

Image courtesy of © Benny Sieu-USA TODAY Sports

Let's set the scene completely, because in a moment like this, everything matters. The Brewers led the Reds 5-4 in the top of the ninth inning, with two outs and two runners on base. They had just intentionally walked Elly De La Cruz to get to Santiago Espinal, the light-hitting utility infielder who had taken over the previous inning. In the eighth, the Reds had used Jacob Hurtubise as a pinch-runner for slugging sluggard Jeimer Candelario, leading to Espinal coming on. 

As Curt Hogg of the Journal-Sentinel reported, during the at-bat, Brewers coach Quintin Berry instructed Blake Perkins to move in and toward right-center field a bit. Perkins had already been playing a bit shallower than usual; he was 310 feet from home plate when the first pitch of the plate appearance was thrown. At Berry's direction, though, he moved in to between 290 and 295 feet from home on the three pitches thereafter.

That would prove crucial. Even on that first pitch, Perkins was 11 feet shallower than his average position for this season. At 321 feet, he plays a bit more shallow than the median center fielder in the first place, but he made the right adjustment to a hitter without much power. Berry, though, was right to diagnose the at-bat and see that the adjustment hadn't been large enough.

Why? Well, firstly, Stuart Fairchild is fast. His Statcast Sprint Speed is 29 feet per second, near the high end of the MLB scale. He was the lead runner, and with two outs, he didn't have to hold up on any ball hit in the air, so on any single to the outfield, it was going to be hard to get him. Secondly, though, Espinal wasn't likely to hit the ball very hard, and as Murphy said after the game, soft-hit outfield singles are very hard to make hard throws on.

It's hard to create a lot of energy in a small space, so gifted outfielders like Perkins make some of their best throws when they get to charge hard on a single and have a few strides to get up to speed. In this case, though, Perkins wouldn't have time to get the fleet Fairchild if he had to charge more than a few steps, so he had to play in and find a way to make a strong throw in a short window of time and space, like an infielder or a catcher.

Listening to Perkins talk about his craft is fascinating. Even caught moments after the fact, before he's able to replay it many times in his head and retroactively assign himself motivations, he narrates his own plays like he saw it all in slow motion.

This is almost certainly part of why he's such a phenomenal defender. He processes visual information extraordinarily quickly; it's why he gets such good jumps and makes such good decisions about routes; when to go all the way to the wall and when to lay back; or when to pull up on a bloop single, as happened Sunday.

Ok, stage set. Let's talk about the guts of the play. On an inside fastball just under 100 miles per hour over the inner edge of the plate, Espinal hit a flare over Brice Turang at second base. It left his bat at 75.6 miles per hour, with a launch angle of 21 degrees. It dropped feather-soft on the outfield grass 233 feet from the plate, and while (as he said) Perkins had time to charge and to consider a diving attempt to make the play, the combination of the swing (a full one, on which he got jammed, which makes a good outfielder pause half a moment to assess the flight of the ball before taking off) and the lacking authority of contact left him no time to reach the ball before it fell.

You know what happened next. Perkins's scoop and throw was gorgeous--perfect. He did everything Murphy talked about, creating a lot of energy and making a very strong peg with no time to gather himself after gathering the ball. It was a terrific throw.

Here's the thing: most of the time, terrific isn't good enough. Since 2015, when Statcast proliferated, there have been 641 plays on which:

• A single was hit
• There was a runner on second
• There were two outs
• The runner tried to score
• The ball had an exit velocity between 70 and 80 miles per hour
• The launch angle was between 10 and 30 degrees
• The ball was hit to the middle chunk of the field: center, right-center, or left-center

Of those 641 runners racing around third to home, you know how many were out? Thirteen. Thirteen! That kind of hit, in that situation, has scored a run 628 times, and it's resulted in an out at home 13 times.

It gets better. Of the 13 runners thrown out at home, seven of them were: Christian Vázquez, James McCann, Tomas Nido, Welington Castillo, Buster Posey, Daniel Vogelbach, and David Ortiz. This play is an out barely 2% of the time, and in half of those cases, it's because a catcher or a 290-pound designated hitter pushed their luck.

The throw from Perkins was that good: so quick, so accurate, so strong that William Contreras had ample time to catch it with a lane open and then lunge into Fairchild's way (even if that, regrettably, led to a collision that might have concussed Contreras). With the game on the line, great coaching instincts, an extraordinary defender, and a little bit of good luck (the ball did come straight at Perkins, after all) created an out on a play that had somewhere just north of a 99-percent chance to be a game-tying RBI single.

That's this Brewers team in a nutshell. They've had a few heartbreaking losses, born of boneheaded play (like Perkins's game-ending dumb bunt Friday night), terrible luck, or questionable calls, but much more often, they're winning close games by making great plays that other teams probably wouldn't have made. They communicate, cooperate, and execute better than (perhaps) any other team in baseball, and as a result, they're 42-29, even in a season that has featured a lot of injury trouble and some uncomfortable transitions. Perkins and Contreras made a play you see defenses make perhaps once a season Sunday, and they did it on the decisive play of the contest. What else can you ask for?

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[Jim French Stepstool]

That's a terrific breakdown. Thanks.

As I replay the whole thing in my head it's even more astounding that anyone who is something other than 'slow' would be thrown out on that play considering there were two outs. When I saw the throw coming towards home & Fairchild not there yet.......I mean, you can't say enough about Perkins' play, or the attention to detail by Q Berry. I hope we can keep him. When you hear about his involvement in this final play & see how the team runs the bases, that's one helluva great coach.

Of course, if Berry just moves him in another 25 feet we don't have to go through all that stress.

[Brock Beauchamp]

I literally LOLed at that list of players who were out at the plate. 

[Rick Daltons Flamethrower]

Great article, great play.

Loved the 628 hits vs 13 outs. Puts it in perspective.

[Playing Catch]

Awesome, awesome article. I just love the appreciation for defense.

I decided to quit playing baseball my freshman year of college (D-III) when I realized that I didn't want to dedicate so much time to it, and when I quit, I knew that what I was going to miss the most wasn't hitting or pitching, but fielding 3rd base. I loved fielding. I hope that in the future, people that never played get to appreciate defense as much as those of us that played.