Bryce Harper and the art of blowing a stop sign for another run

Sometimes as an athlete, you have to trust your gut.

The latest example of that adage comes from Bryce Harper.

In the bottom of the eighth inning in Tuesday night’s Wild Card Game 1 between the Philadelphia Phillies and the Miami Marlins, Harper was on first base, having led off the inning with a single. After a fly out, that brought Nick Castellanos to the plate. The Phillies had a 3-1 lead at that point, but would have loved an insurance run heading into the ninth inning.

Castellanos fouled off the first pitch from left-hander Steven Okert, but he did not miss the second, a slider down in the zone. He laced a liner to the wall in left field, and Harper took off on a dead sprint.

And ran through the stop sign at third from third base coach Dusty Wathan:

As was pointed out on the broadcast, Harper has a clear view of this play unfolding as he rounds second and heads into third. At that moment he knows — better than anyone — if he has a shot at scoring on this play.

And he clearly believed he could, as he flung the batting helmet off and made his way around third, and into home, to score the insurance run.

After the game, in an answer Delaware Online described as “straight out of central casting,” Harper stated that he missed the sign from Wathan.

Perhaps:

Harper’s mad dash came on a night where Wathan was facing his share of criticism. In the first inning Kyle Schwarber was on third base with nobody out, and Alec Bohm lofted a fly ball into right field. Schwarber retreated to the bag, expecting the green light to tag up, but Wathan threw up the stop sign.

Schwarber seemed a little frustrated at the decision, especially when the throw in from right was off the line:

Wathan probably thought it was not worth the risk, given that the heart of the order was coming up. But Harper struck out and J.T. Realmuto flied out to center, and the Phillies came away empty-handed.

Then in the fourth inning, Wathan made another decision that led to some criticism. With the Phillies holding a 1-0 lead, they had runners on second and third with nobody out. Bryson Stott singled to center, scoring Realmuto from third. But Wathan also waved around Castellanos, who was the runner on second.

He was thrown out at home:

It took a perfect throw and tag to get him, but Phillies fans could not help but wonder if now two potential runs had been taken off the board. Thankfully for that group, Stott advanced to third on a wild pitch, and scored on a single from Cristian Pache to give Philadelphia a 3-0 lead.

Being a base coach is not an easy job, and there are a lot of moving parts, You have to make snap decisions based on position of the fielders, your knowledge of their arm strength, your knowledge of the runners involved as well as the situation, and you are doing this while trying to ignore the emotions of the moment. It’s not easy to throw up the stop sign while 50,000 fans are screaming for another run, but sometimes that is the job.

And as an athlete, sometimes it is your job to trust your gut, and run through that stop sign.