Naylor’s sneaky pickoff

Josh Naylor turned a routine pickoff look into a trap on Sunday, helping Seattle catch Jose Altuve leaning off first base. (mlb.com) The play came in the first inning of Seattle’s 6-1 win over Houston on April 12, with Logan Gilbert on the mound and Altuve at first after a leadoff single. Major League Baseball’s official scorer credited Gilbert with the pickoff for the second out. (mlb.com 1) (mlb.com 2) According to Major League Baseball’s game report, Altuve widened his lead from 8.2 feet to 11.8 feet after Naylor faked him into relaxing. Cal Raleigh then dropped his glove as a signal from his crouch, and Gilbert fired to first before Altuve could recover. (mlb.com) A pickoff usually works by catching a runner drifting too far from the bag before the next pitch. Naylor’s part was the decoy: he moved in front of first as if a throw was coming, then held still long enough for Altuve to step back out. (mlb.com) That out mattered because Houston had opened the game with traffic on the bases after Altuve’s single and an umpire-interference call on Yordan Alvarez’s stolen-base attempt. Gilbert got out of the inning, then worked seven innings of four-hit ball with seven strikeouts. (mlb.com) The clip spread beyond the box score because Naylor is a first baseman, not the pitcher officially charged with the play. He joined Seattle after the club re-signed him to a five-year contract in November, and the sequence showed the kind of infield coordination teams practice but rarely pull off that cleanly in a game. (mlb.com 1) (mlb.com 2) Seattle finished the weekend sweep at home behind Gilbert, and the first-inning fake became the play people kept replaying. On the official video, the out lasts a few seconds; the setup took all three Mariners to sell it. (mlb.com 1) (mlb.com 2)