Frelick saves sport with unimaginable house run theft – MLB.com

Adam McCalvy
ANAHEIM — It didn’t strike Brewers heart fielder Sal Frelick on the time, however what a strategy to punctuate the night time the baseball world bid farewell to Willie Mays.
“It’s type of cool doing it at the moment,” Frelick stated.
Just a few outfielders within the historical past of the game patrolled heart with the flare and finesse of Mays, who handed away on Tuesday earlier than Frelick completed Main League Baseball’s slate of video games with a leaping, game-saving catch to finish the Brewers’ 6-3 win over the Angels at Angel Stadium.
A mistimed leap, or a bump of the wall, or just some extra inches on Taylor Ward’s booming fly ball, and it will have been a tying, three-run house run — to not point out an absolute crusher for the Brewers, who held a 6-0 lead with one out within the backside of the ninth earlier than the Angels began cobbling collectively a rally.
As an alternative, the 5-foot-9 Frelick got here again to Earth with the baseball in his glove, and the Brewers began celebrating.
The response from Brewers catcher Gary Sánchez and nearer Trevor Megill — who’d simply been summoned to face Ward — stated all of it. Megill was Milwaukee’s third reliever to look in a half-inning that featured 4 hits, a stroll, two wild pitches and, up to now, solely two outs. After the catch, Sánchez and Megill stood there with their fingers atop their heads.
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"Sal’s play goes down within the document books in Brewers historical past as one of many dramatic finishes to a sport," supervisor Pat Murphy stated.
What did Murphy assume when the baseball left Ward’s bat?
“I used to be considering, ‘tie rating,’” Murphy stated.
“You see him monitoring it and lining it up and you understand it’s going to be shut,” stated left fielder Christian Yelich, who’d started the night with his 200th career home run. “It’s enormous for us. There’s no telling how that sport ends. We’re in all probability nonetheless on the market grinding.”
Mentioned a dejected Ward: “I believe it’s simply baseball. I wasn’t solely certain if I bought it or not, nevertheless it was a hell of a play on his half.”
At first, Frelick downplayed the problem of the catch, saying he was positioned so completely in a “no doubles” protection, shaded barely to the other area for the right-handed-hitting Ward, that it solely took three steps again plus a well-timed bounce.
“Actually not that loopy of a play,” Frelick stated. “I believe it was simply, proper spot, proper time.”
That’s an understatement.
“You follow a lot and typically you don’t even get a ball within the outfield,” Frelick stated. “What number of instances do you also have a probability to rob a house run?”
A dialog in heart area on Tuesday afternoon foreshadowed the dramatic end. Murphy discovered himself chatting with the Angels’ Mickey Moniak and Jo Adell, who have been training house run robberies.
“I stated, ‘Let me ask you guys one thing. Is it me, or have we had extra robbed house runs this yr than ever?’” Murphy stated.
The gamers agreed.
So what’s the reply?
“Larger, stronger, sooner,” Murphy stated, describing at the moment’s hitters. “All people’s enjoying deeper. They’re nearer to the wall they usually perceive they will do that. I believe, basically, guys are enjoying deeper.”
It’s not the primary time in current reminiscence for the Brewers. On Could 29 in opposition to the Cubs, Blake Perkins was in heart area for the Brewers, and he hit a home run and robbed a home run in the identical Milwaukee victory.
And for Frelick, it was a flashback to a different sensational catch on Sept. 10 of final season, when he made a leaping seize whereas concurrently crashing into the wall and proper fielder Joey Wiemer to keep a no-hit bid alive for the Brewers through 10 innings of an eventual loss to the Yankees at Yankee Stadium.
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“If Sal’s close to it,” Murphy stated, “it goes in his glove 99.9 p.c of the time.”

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