I always wonder why more baserunners don’t try to take two bases, going first to third, on a particularly wild pitch. I suppose it has to do with the speed of the runner, the angle of the carom, the depth of the backstop, etc.
And it probably also has to do with whether Kris Bryant is going to be there to snag the ball and dive at you as you try to take third:
I love Miguel Montero nodding to the ump before he makes the call as if to say, “Yeah, he got him. You saw that. He got him. Yeah.”
I’m sure Scooter Gennett figured he had something of a free base given that not only did the ball bounce so far away from behind the plate, but it took Bryant away from the bag and there was no one there to cover (heads up by Montero trying to get over there). Gennett clearly underestimated Bryant’s length and the force with which his tag would push back Gennett’s arm.
A great, heads up play all around. It was a relatively big moment, too, in the seventh inning, as Gennett would have been on third with nobody out, and the tying run would have been at the plate.