Statcast of the Day: Bourn has mixed results

October 5th, 2016

TORONTO -- With the Blue Jays trailing the Orioles by a run in the bottom of the fifth inning of the American League Wild Card Game on Tuesday, Toronto came up with two unlikely hits to spur a game-tying rally in its eventual 5-2 win in 11 innings.
sparked the rally with a lazy fly ball down the left-field line off O's right-hander , as it had an exit velocity of just 83.6 mph with a launch angle of 33 degrees and going a projected 282 feet before bouncing into the stands.
Out of 262 batted balls this year with an 84-mph exit velocity and a launch angle between 31 and 35 degrees, only two dropped for hits. But Saunders placed his perfectly, out of the reach of , for a ground-rule double.
:: AL Wild Card: Orioles vs. Blue Jays coverage ::
"It's frustrating," Tillman said. "You can't defend that. You can't prepare for that. You'd like them to hit at it your guys every time but it doesn't always happen that way."
, the next batter, got on top of a fastball that was 4.6 feet off the ground, and he hit a fly ball down the right-field line that couldn't handle. It also wasn't hit particularly hard, leaving the bat at 92.4 mph with a launch angle of 23 degrees, going a projected 302 feet.

Only one hit this season came on a higher pitch, and batted balls with similar traits had a batting average of just .141. Yet this one also dropped for a double, sending Saunders to third, as Bourn had to run a long way for the ball and took a sub-optimal route, ultimately just missing the catch. Bourn covered 105 feet with a top speed of 18.9 mph, but he had a route efficiency of just 89.2 percent. One batter later, 's single scored Saunders with the tying run.

Bourn's blunder was in sharp contrast to a couple of great plays he made earlier in the game, robbing of extra bases in a similar spot in the corner in the second inning, then traveling a long way to grab a popup in foul ground. In fact, on that Donaldson play, Bourn's distance covered of 145 feet in 6.58 seconds was the longest anyone ran all season to catch a ball that had a hang time of less than seven seconds, per Statcast™.
"We had some good defensive plays before that," Tillman said. "So I think it kind of evened itself out."