July 30, 2016

Always Something New

One thing I love about baseball is on any given day, you may see something you’ve never seen before:

The Washington Nationals made history by turning the first 3-3-5 triple play ever in the major leagues then watched as third baseman Anthony Rendon tossed the ball from the milestone moment into the crowd at AT&T Park.

The Giants loaded the bases in the eighth with two walks sandwiched around a single. Brandon Crawford then lined an 0-1 pitch from Sammy Solis to first baseman Ryan Zimmerman, who had entered the game moments earlier as a part of a double switch.

Zimmerman quickly stepped on first base for the second out then threw to third baseman Anthony Rendon to catch Denard Span to complete the triple play.

“Once I caught it I knew I had the double play,” said Zimmerman, who was moved a few steps back before Crawford swung. “Then Tony was jumping up and down with a smile on his face so I just tossed the ball over to him. Got out of a jam just like that.”

Cool. I’m impressed Zimmerman didn’t throw the ball over Rendon’s head. 🙂

The Nationals won 4-1. Washington now holds a six game lead in the NL East, while the Giants lead is down to one game. Max Scherzer moves into third place in Tom Tango Cy Young Tracker points with the fine outing.

3 thoughts on “Always Something New

  1. tom

    I’ve complained about this before: it’s not a 3-3-5 triple play; it’s a 3-5 triple play. Gary Cohen makes that mistake all the time on SNY: when the shortstop fields a grounder, steps on the bag and throws to first, he calls it a 6-6-3 DP. It’s not. It’s a 6-3 DP. There’s no assist from the shortstop to the shortstop, just as in the triple play there’s no assist from the first baseman to the first baseman. I was at Yankee Stadium when Randy Velare, playing 2B for the A’s, had an unassisted triple play. It would be absurd to say the scoring was 4-4-4.

    ReplyReply
  2. David Pinto Post author

    tom » Yes and no. I agree that most would call it 3-5, but that is ambiguous. For example, say Zimmerman short hopped the ball. He steps on first. He then sees the runner from third who should be going home retreating to the bag, while the runner from second is continuing to third. Zimmerman throws to third, where Rendon tags both runners. It’s still a 3-5 triple play, but in that case the 3-3-5 and 3-5-5 indicate who made the two outs.

    The Traditional 6-4-3 is shorthand for
    6 Assist
    4 Assist+ Putout
    3 Putout

    But you could have a 6-4-3
    6 Assist
    4 Assist
    3 Two putouts.

    The official scorer gets this right in his game summary, but if you are trying to analyze retrosheet data, you might get this wrong. These really should coded something like 3PP5P.

    ReplyReply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *