Blue Jays: How to score Brandon Drury’s ball-counting blunder

It is often said that one learns something new every day. For those in attendance at Target Field Monday, the new thing learned was both bizarre and unfortunately complex.

Last night, Brandon Drury and Teoscar Hernandez combined to make one of the weirdest baserunning mistakes in recent memory.

For those of you who haven’t yet seen the play, here’s how it went down:

After taking a 2-2 pitch low for ball three, Drury, erroneously believing that pitch to be the fourth ball, began taking off his batting gear in preparation of a slow jog to first base.

Hernandez, the runner, started walking to second believing Drury had walked. After realizing the mistake (and having several members of the Twins dugout shout it out at him), Twins catcher Mitch Garver threw the ball back to pitcher Martin Perez, who then lobbed the ball over to first baseman C.J. Cron.

From there, Cron tagged Hernandez, who was in the process of running back to first, for the second out of the inning. Funnily enough, Drury would end up actually walking on the next pitch.

Evidently, Drury made a wretched blunder that caused his teammate to be a sitting duck on the basepaths. It was slightly funny and incredibly disappointing. But, soon after the play happened, many began asking the question, how do you score that?

According to Gregor Chisholm of MLB.com, Target Field’s official scorer, Stew Thornley, ruled that Hernandez was caught stealing after consulting with the Elias Sports Bureau.

After looking at the definition of a caught steal, this appears to be the right decision.

Major League Baseball Rule 9.07(g) clarifies the technical definition of a stolen base, and, more specifically, an instance of caught stealing, with the following passage:

"“The official scorer shall charge a runner as “caught stealing” if such runner is put out, or would have been put out by errorless play, when such runner (1) tries to steal; (2) is picked off a base and tries to advance (any move toward the next base shall be considered an attempt toadvance); or (3) overslides while stealing.”"

Though it may be tempting to call this a pickoff, the fact that Hernandez made “any move toward the next base” means that he was effectively caught stealing.

While the official rulebook does not explicitly define what a “move” is, it’s reasonable to determine that, in taking three to four steps in the direction of second base (with the evident intention of eventually arriving there), Hernandez did, in fact, make a move toward second base.

In short, even though Hernandez mistakenly began walking to second, the fact that he even began to move toward second was, in the view of the rules, the same as if he’d broke for second in an attempt to steal. With that, the throw from Perez to Cron (and Cron’s tag of Hernandez) became the exact same as if the runner had started towards second but returned and gotten caught in a rundown.

Amendments to Rule 6.01(a)(5) further cements this definition, as does the entirety of Rule 5.06, which defines the status of a base being “occupied” by a runner.

In reality, the official scoring of the play doesn’t really matter, as the net result was a Blue Jays baserunner called out in a rather embarrassing fashion.

Regardless, the game of baseball continues to be as baffling as it is entertaining, with this recent example serving as just another display of the complexity of this sport.