There were a lot of reasons why the Atlanta Braves lost on Saturday against the Red Sox. Unfortunately, the Braves' bullpen had a night to forget and the offense stopped scoring runs after the fourth inning. However, lost amongst all of that was one play that not only squandered a prime scoring chance, but also may have been the worst send home we have seen and that includes all of those "ambitious" sends from old friend Ron Washington.
It was the top of the sixth with two outs and runners on first and second. Matt Olson, who has been looking better lately, lined a hit to left field that bounced straight to left fielder Jarren Duran. Inexplicably, third base coach Matt Tuiasososopo gave Alex Verdugo the green light to try and score on the play. To say that the play at the plate was not even close is a gross understatement.
Braves spoil prime scoring chance with overly aggressive baserunning at the worst possible time
Look, we know that runs have been tough to come by this season, but this send was objectively insane. Olson had smoked that line drive and it went straight to a good defender. Combine that with having Verdugo, who is bottom 20% in baseball when it comes to sprint speed, being the guy running and the stop sign simply should have gone up here.
This mistake is also not on Verdugo. He was simply running hard for third and was getting his cues from the third base coach like he should. Hesitating to look himself risked blowing the play and he just had to hope that whatever decision was made was correct and it just didn't work out.
The end result was Verdugo getting thrown out at home by almost half a baseline and the inning being over. While mildly annoying at the time, that out proved very costly as the Red Sox would end up winning by one run on a walk-off solo shot. There is no guarantee that Atlanta was going to score had Verdugo held up at third, but the odds of scoring were certainly better than with what the Braves ended up doing.