Mike Yastrzemski’s Throw Hit a Pole and Gave the Mets a Free Run, Which May Be a First in MLB History
Mike Yastrzemski just made the most bizarre defensive play of the MLB season and the Mets scored a free run because of it.
The play happened in the first inning of New York’s 8-1 win over Atlanta on Sunday at Citi Field. With two men on, A.J. Ewing doubled into the left-field corner off Bryce Elder. Yastrzemski tracked it down and fired toward the cutoff man. The throw was strong. The angle was just slightly off.
The ball hit one of the stanchions holding up the protective netting along the left-field line.
Hit it hard. So hard the carom skipped all the way back behind second base. By the time anyone retrieved it, Jared Young had already scored the third run of what would become a four-run Mets rally.
Braves manager Walt Weiss summed it up after the game, calling it a one-in-a-million shot that hit the pole and admitting that when an outfielder is tucked into that corner, the angle is brutal and the netting pole becomes a real obstacle on a low throw home.
This is the kind of play that gets shown for decades. Protective netting was extended down the foul lines in most stadiums over the last few years for fan safety. The poles holding it up are a relatively new fixture. They almost never come into play because nobody throws the ball that low and that hard from that angle.
Yastrzemski managed it. And he did it in the first inning of a Sunday game with a national audience watching, against the Mets, in a series the Braves desperately needed to take. It is the perfect storm of bad luck and bad timing.
The error is officially Yastrzemski’s eighth of the season, but this is the one fans will remember. Mets broadcasters could not stop laughing. Braves broadcasters did not even bother trying to spin it. Social media spent the rest of the day calling Yastrzemski every joke version of his last name and posting clips of the throw on loop.
Yastrzemski himself has been a steady veteran outfielder for years. He played most of his career in San Francisco before joining Atlanta this season. He is not a player anyone would say has a problem with throwing accuracy. He has a strong arm and a clean release.
This play was just the universe deciding that the netting pole was going to be the bad guy for one afternoon.
The bigger issue for Atlanta is the bigger picture. The Braves dropped the series to New York. They are sitting just over .500 in mid-June and starting to feel pressure in the NL East race. Bryce Elder cannot pitch around plays like this, and the Atlanta offense has not been good enough to mask defensive miscues.
One throw, one pole, one run. That is how a season can shift on a Sunday afternoon.
MLB might want to take another look at the netting pole placement at Citi Field this offseason. If Yastrzemski could do it, someone else will.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
