Game Breaking

Beyond The Box Score

For a tense 24 hours between Friday and Saturday most Padres fans experienced some combination of emotional freefall, pyrrhic victory, dread, shocked optimism, frustration, and awestruck triumph, roughly in that order.

Friday’s game in Pittsburgh took an awful turn in the top of the third:

A fastball from Mitch Keller hit Fernando Tatis Jr square on an unprotected part of the arm. Within moments cameras showed a fulminating protrusion on Tatis’ forearm. And he immediately left the game.

This was an injury so graphic it was hard not to jump to a worst-case scenario: a forearm fracture threatening to compound through the skin, and sure to end a brilliant season. Fans’ minds, only moments before awash in pleasant feelings about the return of Luis Arraez, Jason Heyward, Brandon Lockridge, and the imminent return of Jake Cronenworth and Jackson Merrill, now felt the intrusion of thoughts about a never-ending cascade of injury.

The Padres would overcome a very shaky start from Dylan Cease to beat the Pirates 9-4, but there was an elegiac mood during the normally upbeat post-victory presser. News that X-Rays of Tatis’ forearm were ‘negative’ granted some relief, as the worst-case scenario shifted from a season ending (nearly) compound fracture to simply an IL stint. The question now was how long the IL stint was likely to be.

Fans went to bed Friday with this framing in mind. Which is why it was shocking when just hours before gametime on Saturday the team released the following lineup:

This was a welcome bit of whiplash. And the first shots as the game started showed Tatis with newly donned armor across his left arm:

It was hard to tell if the forearm was bothering him. Bad ball/strike calls seemed to take the bat out of his hand in his first at bat. His second at bat came with a runner on first and one out in the 3rd inning. Tatis worked a 3-1 count, and he got a pitch to hit, a 92 MPH sinker in the zone. But he really didn’t put a great swing on it:

He came up again with the Pirates leading 1-0 in the 6th, his third at bat against Pirate starter Bailey Falter. This time he got a first pitch splitter right in the heart of the zone, but his swing did not generate a lot of bat speed, and the ball got a little in on the handle:

And suddenly it was getting pretty late in the game with the Pirates still leading.

In the top of the 7th with one out Manny Machado stepped in for his own third look at Falter:

Before Statcast data scouts used to say the ball ‘just sounds different’ coming off the bat of certain players. This was one of those home runs:

That was the hardest hit ball of the year for Machado with a 114.3 MPH exit velocity, among the top 5% hardest hit balls in the league this season.

The home run tied the game, but the Padres couldn’t muster any offense through the rest of the turn through the order.

The score remained 1-1 in the top of the 9th, and Tatis led off with one last chance to help the offense. Pittsburgh closer David Bednar was brought in to try to keep it tied, and give the Pirates a chance for a walk-off in the bottom half.

Tatis swung and missed at a first pitch splitter, and couldn’t check his swing on a second splitter down and away, and quickly found himself down 0-2. Bednar challenged Tatis with a third splitter, and what followed was the first of three remarkable plays that the box score cannot do justice:

That was 107.5 MPH off the bat. More importantly that was a double through the 5.5 hole! Tony Gwynn made the 5.5 hole famous by peppering singles into left field. Hits like that are not supposed to go for doubles, but Tatis was thinking two as soon as he hit it and the play at second was not particularly close.

Luis Arraez was up next with a chance to score the go-ahead run with a base-hit. Alas, he chopped a ground ball to the third baseman Ke’Bryan Hayes who looked Tatis back to second before throwing to first to get Arraez for the first out:

This brought Manny Machado to the plate with Tatis still at second and one out. A hit off the Pittsburgh closer would still potentially score the run, but with Arraez failing to move Tatis over, there was no chance for a productive out to score a run.

Machado took a big swing at back-to-back four-seam fastballs from Bednar and whiffed on both going down 0-2 quickly. And this is when the second remarkable play happened:

This stolen base increased the Padres win probability by 8%, an outsized number for a single stolen base. Tatis taking third meant that Machado, down in the count 0-2, could potentially drive in the winning run with just a sac fly or ground ball. This was a pivotal play, and what’s remarkable about it is it didn’t even draw a throw. That’s because Tatis’ lead was ridiculous:

He recognized the importance of a stolen base in that moment, and was able to time up Bednar so well the catcher had no chance to even make a throw.

Alas, Machado could not put the ball in play, ultimately striking out looking at a pitch low in the zone.

This brought Xander Bogaerts to the plate with a chance to plate the winning run, but with two outs it would require a hit; there was no chance for a productive out from Bogaerts.

Bogaerts has been scuffling recently. Despite a nice moment with a home run on Tuesday, he’s still mired in a slump. And Tatis knew this. And on the very first pitch of the at bat to Bogaerts, the third remarkable play of the inning happened:

This is such a rare play it’s not accurate to say there are ‘fundamentals’, but Tatis gets every detail of this play perfect right down to the slide mechanics in which he keeps his outstretched foot on the ground so it can touch the nearest edge of the plate:

And he needed to, look how close this was:

Runners in this situation tend to let the outstretched leg drift upwards as that’s where the momentum of the play naturally takes it. But Tatis exercised impeccable body control. And the run would prove to be decisive in the Padres eventual 2-1 victory.

This will go down as a play in which Tatis scored a run on a wild pitch. But look at this play, the ball barely gets away from the catcher:

These types of plays are important to notice because the box score absolutely fails to capture the value that Tatis is creating. This play is made by Tatis exercising his agency, despite the wild pitch designating Bednar as having been responsible for the play.

In the inning Tatis will be credited with a double, a stolen base, and a run scored on a wild pitch. That’s certainly a good inning, but getting a double, a stolen base, and a run scored is a fairly quotidian occurrence for the good players in the league. This misses something. These plays weren’t normal. They were a preternaturally talented player finding ways to help his team win that similarly talented players wouldn’t have been able to execute. And the Pirates couldn’t do anything about it. These plays were game breaking.