Yankees fans will never forget Johnny Damon stealing two bases on the same play in the 2009 World Series, but Gleyber Torres may have beaten him on Thursday, scoring from first...on a ground ball to second base?
Indeed, it sounds funny, but thanks to the shift and some poor defensive coverage by the Astros, Torres was able to score all the way from first on what was ruled an infield single for Aaron Hicks.
With one out in the bottom of the eighth, Hicks, batting left-handed, grounded a ball up the middle that Astros shortstop Carlos Correa could not cleanly field. The ball trickled away from Correa, and with three infielders on the right side due to the shift, third baseman Alex Bregman was covering second base attempting to get a force on Torres – so Torres alertly sprinted towards third.
The problem for the Astros? No one was there, so catcher Martin Maldonado sprinted down the line to cover that bag. The other problem for the Astros? With Maldonado heading to third, no one was covering home, as neither pitcher Ryan Pressly nor first baseman Yuli Gurriel rotated to cover the plate. Torres saw that, and when Correa simply flipped the ball to Bregman, Torres kept running and easily beat Maldonado in a foot race to the plate, sliding in without a throw to cut the Yankees’ deficit at the time to 5-4.
Take a look at the whole wild play here:
"That was great. As an infielder, he’s aware of shifts and predicaments you can get yourself in, so a real heads-up play," manager Aaron Boone said after the game. "I saw him racing around second and was like, ‘yeah, okay,’ and then to keep racing and get us within one there…really heads up by Gleyber."
"When I get to first base, Reggie (Willits) always tells me to check the defense, so I knew they were in the shift, and saw the opportunity to run to third," Torres said. "When I was running to third, I saw the pitcher was still on the mound, and I thought I could beat Maldonado back to the plate, so I took advantage of the opportunity. I'm happy I could score in that situation."
Torres admitted that he didn't see third base coach Phil Nevin giving him the stop sign, but in this case, it worked out.
"In that situation, the heat of the moment, I just saw the opportunity to score, and that's what I did," Torres said.
And, he said, those situations are indeed something infielders and pitchers work on a lot, so having that experience helped him be heads up, as his skipper surmised.
"Every single day, we work on that and have conversations about that. We always tell the pitchers to go to third to cover when we have the shift like that," Torres said. "Our infield works with our pitchers in those situations, because it can always happen to us."
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