Masyn Winn dove into the shortstop hole in the bottom of the fourth at Wrigley Field, came up throwing off his back foot, and narrowly beat Pete Crow-Armstrong to first base on a throw that had no business working.
That’s the play. Whatever else the Cardinals and Cubs do with the rest of Friday’s game, that throw is the highlight, and I’m not interested in arguing about it. Everyone talking about the Cardinals’ rebuild this season keeps the conversation on bats and arms in the rotation — who’s hitting cleanup, who gets stretched out in September. Nobody’s talking about the shortstop with a cannon for an arm, and that’s the miss, because a throw like this is the quiet infrastructure that makes a pitching staff’s numbers look better than the raw stuff behind them.
MLB.com’s Statcast breakdown clocked the throw at 83.3 MPH with a 1.1-second exchange from glove to release. That exchange time is the real story here. A second-and-change from dirt to the first baseman’s glove means Winn’s body made the decision before his brain caught up, the same reflex you’d use to catch a glass sliding off the counter before you even register you knocked it.
Here’s the clip, because it holds up on a second watch:
https://twitter.com/TalkinBaseball_/status/2088344010649723047
Crow-Armstrong hit a two-hopper that plenty of shortstops in this league field standing up, cleanly, no drama involved. Winn turned it into appointment viewing by going to the ground for a ball he didn’t strictly need to go to the ground for, which is either elite instinct or a guy who trusts his own arm enough that the hard way is actually his easy way. Either way, first base got a baseball delivered to it that a diving man had absolutely no right to deliver.
I play in a rec league on Tuesday nights in Hoboken, and making that throw off one foot, from the dirt, without ever squaring up my hips, is the stuff of my recurring nightmares. Most people who dive for a ball are just trying to survive the landing. Winn dove and still had a plan.
None of this shows up in a box score, though it probably should. It’s the fourth inning of a game that’s still being played, and one groundout to short isn’t rewriting anyone’s season. Nobody’s handing out Gold Gloves in August, and nobody outside St. Louis is tracking a shortstop’s range on a random Friday in the middle of the schedule. But Winn’s arm is the quiet reason the Cardinals infield works, even on nights nobody’s counting outs by the pitcher’s name.
Crow-Armstrong will get his highlights in Chicago plenty this year. Today wasn’t one of them.
