Javy Báez Forgot How Many Outs There Were, Got Doubled Off, and Got Yanked from the Game

It has been a brutal start to the season for old friend Javy Báez. Like I mentioned in the Bullets this morning, he came into the day as the literal worst hitter in baseball so far this year, and boy did things not get better tonight.

First of all, you had Javy FINALLY getting his first extra-base hit of the year … but even that wasn’t a good thing, because it was a double off the wall that he thought was gone, so he didn’t run out of the box.

Then, to make matters worse, there was the part where he got doubled off of second base because he pretty clearly didn’t realize there weren’t two outs in the inning:

As you could see at the end of the clip, Tigers manager A.J. Hinch was not happy. And it didn’t take him long to respond:

I am not a hardo type and I *love* Javy Báez, but it’s hard for me to beat up on Hinch for that decision after the two mental mistakes in such quick succession. I’m not saying a veteran like Báez should need a “message” sent, but maybe the message being sent is to the rest of the team. You can’t have stuff like that.

Meanwhile, I just hate to see these struggles for Báez. When he’s right, he’s one of the three or four most FUN players to watch in baseball. Unfortunately, those moments have been few and far between the last couple years.