Hot GIF: Jason Heyward Brings One Back

by
March 29, 2012

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.

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Justen
12 years ago

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.

0
Benjamin
12 years ago
Reply to  Justen

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.

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Navin Vaswani
12 years ago
Reply to  Benjamin

You’ve lost me.

4