Play the game of baseball long enough, and you’re sure to make some sort of blunder that you feel cost your team the game.
Most baseball games aren’t won or lost on one play, but John Rave’s defensive miscue played an outsized role in the Kansas City Royals’ loss to the Minnesota Twins on Sunday.
The Royals held a 3-2 lead and had one out in the eighth inning, when Rave turned what should have been a single by Twins outfielder Austin Martin into a triple, diving after a ball that was destined to fall anyway. Two batters later, the game was tied, and the Twins wound up walking off the Royals in the 11th inning.
There wasn’t much Rave could say in defense of his play, but he also wasn’t the only reason the Royals lost on Sunday. They could have had more than one hit in their 15 at-bats with runners in scoring position, for example, or put up just a single run in one of the two extra innings.
But Rave wasn’t hiding from the error in his postgame media availability, either.
“I was just trying to be too aggressive in a situation or in a time when I need to know the situation a bit better,” Rave said, per Theodore Tollefson of MLB.com. “Honestly, just a stupid read and need to know the situation better there. If we give up a single, we give up a single, but just trying to do too much.”
Royals skipper Matt Quatraro wasn’t in the mood to bash Rave for his mistake, even giving the 27-year-old some credit for how close he came to making the catch.
“I know if he had to do it over again, he would have played it as a single, if he knew he wasn’t going to catch it,” Quatraro said. “But he’s probably a couple of inches away from catching that ball. So that’s effort. That’s intensity. That’s trying to do the best you can.”
Accountability is good, but unfortunately, Rave is also batting .200 with a .623 OPS in 53 games this season. If he’s going to be on the field, he’d better be able to hold his own on defense. And the Royals don’t seem to have too many better options to take over left field on a daily basis, a poor reflection on how this roster was constructed.
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‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.si.com ’
