More On Game 3 Mustang Loss

I picked up the Gazette from the driveway early this morning, eager to find the name of the player who ran himself out at 3rd base in the 8th inning last night. Turns out that the Gazette's Greg Rachac expanded his feature article on catcher Yovan Gonzalez to include some of the highlights of the Mustangs' 7-5 loss to Great Falls on Wednesday evening, except that he didn't mention the base running gaffe. Nor did the Gazette have a box score in its print edition. It was there online this morning but it turns out that the Mustang website itself has an even better box score, which includes such esoterica as the wind and the weather, pitchers that had extra-base hits off them and the inning, the ground-outs and fly-outs, RISP, LOB  etc. Hey this is really fun. They even have a recap of the play in narrative form. With this you could broadcast your own game without seeing the game.

So anyway, it turns out Kyle Waldrop was the guy who hit the double into the left field corner which scored Buckley and Maddox, and then was out easily on a relay from left fielder Haddow to Herbek, the shortstop, to 3rd baseman Patino for the tag. Now, according to the Cardinal Rules of Base-Running, one should be wary of making either the 1st out or the 3rd out at 3rd base as scoring from 2nd base is still in the cards with no outs or 2 outs. One can be a little more aggressive with 1 out but assessing the risk is still the most important thing the runner can do. If the play is behind him then he must depend on the 3rd base coach, but if he can see it in front of him in left field, then he must make the decision himself. So he was wrong on this play, but it is still good to see the guys running the bases aggressively as they have been doing.