Foul Sacrifice Flies
Suppose a baseball game is tied in extra innings or in the late innings and one of the teams has a runner on third base with one out. If a player on that team
then hits the deep fly ball that is about to land in foul territory, the smart move by the opposing team would be to not catch the ball. That's
exactly what St. Louis Cardinals outfielder Matt Holiday did in the
12th inning of a 2014 game against the Milwaukee Brewers. As Cardinals announcer Tim McCarver asked, "How many outfielders
would have had the wherewithal to allow a ball that he could catch to drop?". Seattle
Mariners outfielder Seth Smith did the same thing in the 13th inning of a 2016 game against the Tampa Bay Rays. A tie game is not the only situation in which
the best strategy would be to not a catch a deep foul fly ball.
If a team is trailing by one in the late innings and the other team has a runner on third base and one out, the smart move by the losing team would still be to
not catch the deep foul ball in order to prevent an insurance run from scoring. Well, the Royals were trailing the Oakland A's 8-7 in the top of the ninth
inning of a 2019 game. The A's had runners on second and third base with one out and Corban Joseph at the plate. Joseph hit a ball that Royals third baseman
Cheslor Cuthbert caught in foul territory near the
Athletics' dugout. Unfortunately for the Royals, Cuthbert's momentum carried him into the dugout and
the A's were awarded an
insurance run due to an obscure rule. The score was now 9-7 and the A's took that lead into the bottom of the ninth inning. In the final half-inning, the
Royals scored a run to close the gap to 9-8. They didn't score another run and lost the game.
If the A's hadn't scored the insurance run, the Royals' run would have tied the game. I bet that Cuthbert regrets catching that foul ball.
I wonder if San Francisco Giants outfielder Mike Yastrzemski shares a similar regret over an incredible catch he made on a foul ball in a
2022 game against the San Diego Padres. The Giants and the Padres were tied 2-2 in the seventh inning and the Padres had a runner on second
base with no outs. The Padres' Austin Nola then hit this fly ball, which Yaz caught
in foul territory. The runner advanced to third base on the play and scored the go-ahead run on the subsequent play (a ground out). The Giants
did not score another run in the ballgame and the Padres won the game 3-2. The question is: did Yaz make the right play?
In what many longtime baseball observers consider to be the greatest World Series game of all time (Game 6 of the 1975 World Series), Reds outfielder George Foster took a risk by
catching this ball in foul territory. At the time, the game was tied 6-6 in the bottom of the ninth
inning and the bases were loaded with no outs. The risk paid off as Foster then threw a strike to catcher Johnny Bench, who tagged out Red Sox player Denny Doyle and kept the game tied. (While Foster's decision benefited the Reds, Doyle's choice to tag up did not work out well for the Red Sox.)