Hot GIF: Jason Heyward Brings One Back
Yesterday’s MLB.com box score reads, “Raul Ibanez flies out sharply to right fielder Jason Heyward.” I vehemently disagree.
I like to think that each baseball that’s put in play has its own destiny. And the baseball you see above, caught — no, brought back — by Jason Heyward, wasn’t destined to be a home run. Such is life.
One more thing: Home Runs Brought Back (HRBB) ought to be a new defensive statistic. Because that was no ordinary fly out. And because we don’t have enough statistics around here.
H/T: My fellow Canadian @TheScottLewis. And be sure to check out Getting Blanked; the boys do great work.
Navin Vaswani is a replacement-level writer. Follow him on Twitter.
I agree with a new statistic for it. Catches like that literally save an exact amount of runs that would have otherwise been put on the scoreboard.
Except that you have to figure the replacement level outfielder would save 16.8% of that home run, so it really only saves 83.2% of the runs that would have scored.
You’ve lost me.