Watch: Yankees star costs team game with 'inexcusable' lack of hustle on final play
At the heart of baseball philosophy sits the reconciliation of two fundamentally conflicting ideas, ideas that the Yankees ran afoul of in Monday night’s loss to the Rays.
The first is “always hustle” — run out every ground ball, take off from first and try to get to home plate on a lazy pop fly with two outs, and the like. If you’re getting paid millions of dollars to step up to bat five times over the course of three hours, the least you can do is try hard.
The second is “pick your battles.” You don’t want to go full-steam on every play in practice because no fan ever wants to consider the thought that their player ran too hard toward first base on a routine grounder and pulled up lame with a season-ending hamstring injury or torn ACL.
But even if you’re firmly in the latter camp, “down a run in the bottom of the ninth with two out and the bases loaded” qualifies as a battle worth picking.
And Gary Sanchez, under those circumstances, failed to hustle. He was thrown out on a play he could and should have beaten out, and cost the Yankees the game.
Gary Sanchez seemed to not hustle on this game-ending play pic.twitter.com/GQIzFV7l1y
— Sports Illustrated (@SInow) July 24, 2018
With the bases loaded and two outs, Sanchez hit the ball on the ground to the shortstop side of second base, where Daniel Robertson — playing on that side as part of an infield shift — fielded it. Shortstop Willy Adames, covering second, got the ball on a little flip throw, but Aaron Hicks beat him there.
In most circumstances, that would have been the end of the play because in the time it took to try and get the force play at second, most hitters would have already made it to first and the tying run would have scored.
But Adames noticed that Sanchez was still making his way down the line. So he fired the ball to first to record the final out of the game and extinguish any chance for a Yankees victory.
And if Sanchez hadn’t been dogging it up the line, he’d have been safe.
After the game, Sanchez admitted, via his interpreter, “I should’ve run harder.”
Gary Sanchez: I should've run harder. pic.twitter.com/ayXGgxVd86
— YES Network (@YESNetwork) July 24, 2018
“You learn a lot in this game,” Sanchez said. “This is one of those instances where you learn from it. You put it behind and look forward to tomorrow.”
Manager Aaron Boone said he wanted to watch video of the plays involving Sanchez before addressing his concerns with the player.
“We always address stuff with our players,” Boone said, according to the New York Daily News.
Despite an impressive 63-35 record, the loss dropped New York six games behind the Boston Red Sox. If the Yankees are to have any hope of catching Boston, they need to fight for every scrap of ground in the standings they can get.
And that means having all of their key players try hard at baseball when the game’s close in the ninth inning.
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