NEW YORK — Let’s just get this out of the way up top: Jazz Chisholm Jr. should have been called out at second base. The replay review of his seventh-inning stolen base showed that his foot had not yet touched the bag when Royals second baseman Michael Massey applied the tag. Chisholm then scored the go-ahead run on Alex Verdugo’s single to left field, and the Yankees won a somewhat sloppy, back-and-forth Game 1 of the American League Division Series, 6-5, on Saturday night at Yankee Stadium.
“They just said there was nothing clear and convincing to overturn it,” Royals manager Matt Quatraro said Sunday morning, after he asked MLB why the call on the field was not reversed. “If he had been called out, that call would have stood too.”
Perhaps that explanation is reasonable; perhaps the middle of a baseball game isn’t the time for the league’s replay officials to be doing a Zapruder-like examination to determine whether a glove lace grazes a limb before that limb grazes a base. I’ve made that same argument plenty of times in the past when close calls are upheld.
Baseball’s challenge rule is set up like the U.S. judicial system: The umpire is judged by a jury of their peers in the replay room, and as long as there is a Henry Fonda among them who is not certain — beyond a reasonable doubt — that the umpire was wrong, the call is supposed to stand. But the fact is, any reasonable person who watched the footage of the play would think the tag was applied before Chisholm’s foot made contact with the bag: The Royals (and Royals fans) have a right to be upset.
Anthony Volpe struck out swinging at the same pitch on which Chisholm stole second. Instead of a strikeout-caught stealing double play, the Yankees had a runner on second base with one out in a tie game. We don’t know how things might’ve played out if the call had gone Kansas City’s way, but if it had and if the Royals had gone on to win, this series might’ve looked completely different entering Monday night’s Game 2.
That said, the fact that the play at second was close at all is a testament to Royals right-hander Michael Lorenzen, who is one of the better pitchers in baseball at holding runners on and preventing steals. Chisholm, meanwhile, was one of five players in the majors to steal at least 40 bases this season.
Volpe’s six-pitch at-bat, in the seventh inning of a tie game, provided the ideal setting for this cat-and-mouse game to unfold.
Stealing a base is all about being on time. You run too early and the pitcher picks you off; you run too late and the catcher throws you out. Consider the six-pitch sequence as baseball’s version of the “Not My Tempo” scene in Damien Chazelle’s Whiplash, where Lorenzen is Terence Fletcher, the abusive jazz instructor played by J.K. Simmons, and Chisholm is Andrew Neiman (Miles Teller), his drumming student. (To be clear, unlike Fletcher, Lorenzen seems like a nice guy and not a sadist.)
Lorenzen is doing everything he can to mess up Chisholm’s timing, while Chisholm is trying to keep pace with Lorenzen’s ever-changing tempo.
On the first pitch, Chisholm is dragging; Lorenzen delivers to the plate before Chisholm can take his full lead. Volpe takes the pitch for a ball. Chisholm’s second lead is all about watching Lorenzen. He has no intention of running on that pitch, but he wants to get a feel for how the pitcher might alter his tempo on the second pitch. You can see Chisholm is fiddling with his sliding mitt, but his eyes are glued to Lorenzen. That pitch also misses. Ball two.
Next comes the first disengagement. Lorenzen comes set with 10 seconds remaining on the pitch clock and then he waits. He turns his head 90 degrees, his vision going from home plate toward third base, and then back again. He nods his chin forward, feigning a look over his front shoulder at Chisholm, who doesn’t flinch. Lorenzen bobs his head again, this time more subtly, and then in one motion hops off the rubber, spins, and throws to first baseman Yuli Gurriel. Chisholm drop-steps with his left leg and scurries back to the base. The pickoff attempt is low, and Chisholm gets in easily, and as soon as Gurriel tosses the ball back to Lorenzen, Chisholm skips off the base again, glances around at the fielders, and returns to the bag.
While Chisholm is surveying his surroundings, Lorenzen catches the ball, quickly re-engages with the rubber, brings his hands together with nine seconds left on the clock, and pauses for a beat in the set position before rocking forward with his slidestep motion and whipping a 95-mph sinker to the lower part of the zone.
