There’s more to baseball than meets the eye, especially at the major league level.
The Boston Red Sox beat the Philadelphia Phillies 9-8 on Wednesday night. The game was a back-and-forth affair that featured several lead changes, multiple home runs and two extra innings.
While Red Sox catcher Carlos Narvaez’s go-ahead, two-run home run in the 11th inning will be what most people remember from the game, he also had a key play in the bottom of the tenth inning when he threw Weston Wilson out at second base to end the inning.
Narvaez spoke to ESPN after the game and broke down his process.
“As soon as I saw Wilson get into the game for [Kyle] Schwarber, I knew at some point he was going to break,” Narvaez said. “We got ahead in the count, and we had one disengagement at the moment…so I wanted to locate. A modified pitchout, a fastball away. He broke in that moment, and it was a good pitch by [Greg] Weissert.”
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The attention to detail was key in throwing out the base runner. Narvaez knew Wilson was going to take off, guessed when he was going to run and called a pitch to cut down the runner. Weissert executed the pitch, Narvaez made the throw and Ceddanne Rafaela put the tag down. It’s hard to do it much better than that.
After a catcher’s interference call and a catcher’s balk call in the prior two games, Narvaez should be happy to contribute in such a meaningful way to a win. He’ll need to be on his A-game as the Los Angeles Dodgers come to Fenway for a weekend series.
