Javier Baez is good at a lot of baseball things — great at some, even! — but making contact isn’t always his strong suit. So, when Jason Heyward stole second base and moved to third on an error, Baez, in a 3-2 count, was asked to try to bunt Heyward home.
The Cubs laid down a terrible bunt at the worst possible time
The wrong hitter in the wrong count at the wrong time.
Tommy Gilligan-USA TODAY Sports
Turns out it doesn’t matter what kind of contact Baez is making — he’s not necessarily good at it.
He was also put into an impossible situation here. It was already a 3-2 count, so a foul ball on a bunt — like the one he hit — was going to be an out. He only had one chance to get this right, and it was against someone who can throw in the upper-90s.
Baez attempted to bunt relatively late into the pitch, and jabbed at the pitch instead of letting the ball make contact with his bat. The result? He knocked it down into the dirt behind him, the Indians got their second out, and they were eventually able to escape the inning without giving up a go-ahead run to the Cubs.
Was it the wrong call? Maybe not in a fresh count, given Baez’s issues making contact — he had already struck out 12 times in 29 World Series plate appearances before this one. With the count already 3-2, though, against Bryan Shaw, with just one chance to get it right, the Cubs might have called for a play that they’ll regret.
