Padres’ comical double play
A Padres defensive sequence turned into a comical double play that immediately went viral — fans and highlight shows are dissecting exactly how the play unfolded. (x.com)
It looked like a Little League mistake and ended as a Major League Baseball double play. In the top of the first inning on April 10, San Diego turned a two-out grounder into two outs after the ball hit second baseman Jake Cronenworth, skipped to shortstop Xander Bogaerts, and then got flipped to first baseman Gavin Sheets. (mlb.com) The batter was Colorado Rockies leadoff man Tyler Freeman, and the batted ball came off the bat at 82.9 miles per hour and traveled only 133 feet. Major League Baseball logged it as a ground ball that Cronenworth “taps” to Bogaerts before the throw to Sheets. (mlb.com) What made the clip look wrong is that Cronenworth never fielded it cleanly. The ball glanced off him, changed direction, and still rolled directly into the path of Bogaerts, who had enough time to gather it and start the turn at first. (mlb.com) That kind of play only works because a batted ball that deflects off an infielder stays live unless it has already touched the ground in a way that changes the rule. Here, the Padres treated the ricochet like a carom off a wall, and the inning kept moving. (mlb.com) The sequence came in Padres-Rockies at Petco Park on Friday, April 10, with Walker Buehler on the mound for San Diego. Major League Baseball published the highlight the same night under the labels “uncanny” and “unconventional,” which is why the clip spread so fast across baseball feeds. (mlb.com 1) (mlb.com 2) The funny part is that every Padres player did the boring thing after the weird thing. Bogaerts did not rush the transfer, Sheets stayed planted at first, and the accidental bounce turned into a routine-looking finish that made the replay even stranger. (mlb.com) The play also landed in a game San Diego eventually won 5-2 on a three-run walk-off home run by Sheets in the ninth inning. That gave one role player two of the night’s cleanest finishing touches: the easy catch that completed the viral double play and the swing that ended the game. (apnews.com) (mlb.com) Baseball produces a few clips every season that look fake even when the box score says they counted, and this one joined that pile immediately. The official scorer only sees a double play in the record, but the replay shows why fans kept watching it twice. (mlb.com)
