FORT MYERS, Fla. – A day later, the man who broke his bat in about the most mysterious way possible still wasn’t sure exactly what happened.
But Red Sox right fielder Wilyer Abreu tried to explain how a check-swing in the bottom of the fourth inning of Tuesday’s game against the Pirates led to his bat snapping so thoroughly that the only thing he had left in his hands was a small portion of the handle. He didn’t even make contact. It was ruled a strike.
You're not alone if you're scratching your head.
“I don't know,” said Abreu. “That was kind of weird. It was the first time that happened to me. I don't think that’s happened too many [other] times, either, so it just was weird.”
However, Abreu does have a theory.
“In the at-bat before, when I hit the ground ball to shortstop, I felt something weird on the bat,” he said. “I felt something with the contact. It didn’t feel the right way. And in the next at-bat, I just broke it.”
So, why didn’t Abreu switch to a different piece of lumber?
“I tested it,” he said. “I tried to see if it was broken, but I didn’t feel anything. I didn’t feel anything wrong with the bat. But in my mind, the sound was weird in the at-bat before, but I didn’t expect the bat would break like that.”
Chalk it up as one of Spring Training’s great mysteries.
“Was it a checked-swing or broken bat? That’s the question,” said Red Sox manager Alex Cora.
Nobody knows for sure.
One thing Abreu did grasp very quickly was how many of his friends saw the highlight, if you want to call it that.
“Yeah, I mean, that video went viral. So I got a lot of messages,” Abreu said.
Broken bats happen in all types of ways on a baseball field. On jam shots, on high-and-inside heat, on balls off the end of the bat, on impact with thick thighs after a frustrating strikeout. But we can confidently say this is a new and impressive way to splinter some lumber.
Abreu was not involved in the making of a recent video testing the grip strength of MLB players, but after witnessing this mystifying checked swing broken bat, we can only assume he would have blown all those numbers out of the water.
That is, unless he was simply check-swinging an already compromised piece of wood.