I Don't Think We Talked Enough About How Great That Pete Crow-Armstrong Throw Was. No, the Other One.

[Matthew Trueblood]

Before it fades too far into the rearview to be visible on the receding horizon, let's talk about the extraordinary play the Cubs' center fielder made Sunday, albeit in a lost cause.

Image courtesy of © Rick Scuteri-Imagn Images

 

I don't need to tell you that Pete Crow-Armstrong made an incredible throw to notch an outfield assist while the Cubs were in Arizona last weekend. You've probably barely stopped talking about it. It was a marvelous play, a combination of several things that make the young outfielder special all rolled up into one moment: athleticism, competitiveness, ambition, technique. Wasn't it marvelous?

Here's the thing: You and I might not be thinking about the same play. It was this play, from Saturday's Cubs win, that drew most of the oohs and ahhs in its aftermath.

There's good reason for all the hoopla, too. Don't attend solely to the throw itself. Look at the hyperathletic way Crow-Armstrong set himself up for it, starting with the high kick of his left leg just before he makes the catch. That got his crow hop going before Josh Naylor was even allowed to leave second base. This isn't just sensational athleticism, in the form of exceptional accuracy on a quick release and a live-armed, whippy throw. It's also technical excellence. He lined himself up perfectly, got his body in motion before catching the ball and knew how to transfer all that energy to the right places, in the right order.

However, I'm talking about the throw Crow-Armstrong made Sunday, even as the horse was leaving the barn and the Diamondbacks were completing a comeback to hand the Cubs a deflating loss. 

It's less visually arresting than the throw that nabbed Naylor. Because it came on a single by a pitcher pulled off the opposing bench, to take down a second runner after one insurance run had already come home, the vibes around it are much less thrilling. As a pure baseball play, though, I want to make the case that it was even more remarkable.

Crow-Armstrong started this play 307 feet from home plate, and was shaded slightly toward right-center field. I would argue that he should have been playing even shallower, but the modern orthodoxy is to play about 325 feet from the plate (a bit deeper, in a cavernous center field like Chase Field's), and the Cubs probably didn't have any kind of scouting report on Ryne Nelson as a hitter. To be safe, he was well-positioned by guarding the opposite-field gap and being at a shallow but respectful depth. 

However, the ball Nelson punched through the infield (just past the reach of the drawn-in Dansby Swanson) was very much the kind of hit you should expect from a pitcher. It had an initial exit velocity of almost 90 miles per hour, but because it was hit practically straight down, it had taken a few high, lazy bounces and was into its dribbler era by the time it got to the outfield grass. It wasn't truly back up the middle, either, but a fair distance to the left of second base, with some sidespin that seemed to keep it rolling and skipping toward left-center.

The production crew did us no favors on this play, on either team's broadcast. In fairness to them, though, it probably looked like a fairly easy two-run single. They did the series of quick cuts that is customary on such a play:

1. Center-field camera shows the pitch and initial contact.
2. Cut to high camera behind home plate, where we see the ball elude Swanson.
3. Quick cut to show us the lead runner scoring.
4. Back to the panoramic view, to find Crow-Armstrong fielding and throwing.
5. Quick cut back to the plate for the close-up on the second runner.

When the truck uses that sequence, they read the play as unlikely to yield high drama, other than the rising action of runs crossing the dish. If they'd thought Crow-Armstrong would have a play on Eugenio Suárez, they'd have stuck with Shot No. 4 much longer, panning downward to the plate or cutting later to an angle that would help us see if the runner would be safe or out.

Neither broadcast's producer, in other words, properly accounted for Crow-Armstrong's warp-speed ballet. He sprinted in and across (few outfielders are truly great at charging ground-ball singles, but even the ones who are usually struggle when they have to come in at a true diagonal like this one), picked the ball cleanly, turned his shoulders against his direction of movement to set himself and fired the ball practically on the run. As was true when he nailed Naylor, he was lethally accurate.

This broad genre of play happens several times a year: outfielder throws out runner trying to score from second on single. Under all the relevant circumstances, though—given all the ground Crow-Armstrong had to cover and the way the ball just died on its way to the outfield—it's an extraordinary achievement within its category. Crow-Armstrong has been uneven so far, on the young season and across his career. Defensively, however, he's increasingly dazzling, not only creating value with raw athleticism but demonstrating daring and polished skills that other outfielders can't match. The play he made on Sunday, while not enough to keep the Cubs in the game, is perhaps the best example of that to date.

 

View full article

[Michael Trzinski]

Did he play 'Ollie' on Hoosiers? lol

The throw to home was the FAR better throw; it never went more than 10 feet off the ground--a laser. The throw to third was a 'rainbow.' Both did the job, though...