Jon Jay makes spectacular diving miss, rectifies himself with two amazing grabs

With the grand debut of MLB's Statcast going on during the Cardinals - Nationals showdown, Jon Jay probably got a little amped up while wanting to make a good debut for the super computers. 

That came back to bite him a bit in the bottom of the second inning. Ryan Zimmerman laced a line drive to right-center and Jay, hoping to make a good impression on the baseball-loving HAL, leapt and crashed down to Earth a few feet from the ball.

Though we don't have a Statcast of the play, so we can't know how many parsecs away from the ball Jay was, we do know a few things. Namely that he was roughly half a set of Encyclopedia Britannicas away: 

Or about a quarter of a party sub: 

And, shockingly, roughly 18,000 ghost emojis: 

The center fielder would have the chance to make good the next inning. With Zimmerman again at the plate, Jay raced back to the warning track to make the grab. 

This time we did have all the nitty gritty details with Jay topping out at an absurd 17 mph to make the grab. To put that in perspective, I think I once averaged 17 mph while riding my bicycle ... down a hill ... and was too sore to move the next day. Frankly, that's amazing.

He didn't stop there, though. With the bases loaded and the game tied at one in the bottom of the ninth, Jay made another diving grab to force the game into extra innings. 

After the game, which the Nationals won on Yunel Escobar's walk-off home run, Cardinals manager Mike Matheny was effusive in his praise for his center fielder. Said Matheny: 

I think the computer machine agrees.

Additional reporting by Jenifer Langosch / MLB.com