NEWSLETTER
I started to put the Bullets together, and there was just too much specifically on the Seiya Suzuki play to not break it off an park it in its own corner. Partly that’s because I want to deal with it and be done with it for a few hours, and partly that’s because I know it has the potential to be a seminal play, one way or another, for the way we talk about the rest of the season.
Which is NOT the same thing as saying that Suzuki’s dropped fly ball sums up his entire season. The guy has been outrageously good lately – he was great in last night’s game, too! – and the Braves scored seven runs to come back to win that game, not just those two runs (which, by the way, Suzuki didn’t put on base). We can hold both things in our mind: that was a critical and awful play at a critical and awful time, and it was also just one mistake in a sea of other baseball things that happen over the course of 162.
The Cubs cannot let Suzuki’s error become the defining moment of what they’ve done this year.
All right. So. The play, itself. If things go sideways from here for the Cubs, it’s just a reality that you’re going to see this again and again for years to come. You don’t need me to share it here, but I’m embedding only for the purposes of commenting on the play:
A trio of player-specific things about the play:
1.) Seiya Suzuki has to make this catch. Errors happen. I won’t crush him for it. But that’s obviously a very playable ball, and he called off Bellinger late in the route. Long run? Sure. Sky high? Sure. But it’s just about completely routine.
2.) Cody Bellinger could have made this catch. You can see from his approach that there was a split second where he thought about calling off Suzuki. I think, given his proximity, he was right NOT to do it, but he could have. Don’t read this as blame for Bellinger. It’s not that. It’s only commenting that this was a play that multiple guys could have made. Alas.
3.) Speaking of which … Pete Crow-Armstrong is with the team right now to be the center fielder in late-game close situations. PCA is a PARTICULARLY wide-ranging, aggressive center fielder, and I’m a billion percent certain he would have pursued quickly, called off Suzuki, and made this catch. We saw him do it on Sunday in the 9th inning, ranging very wide into left field and calling off Ian Happ. But Crow-Armstrong had been pulled out of the one-run game, so we’ll never know for sure.
It looked at the last moment like there was a bit of a flinch there by Suzuki, and then he was rubbing his eyes a bit thereafter. Not hard to guess that the lights may have played a part – they did – but he is a pro and did not want to blame it on the lights.
“I honestly thought it went into my glove, so it was just that split second where it blurred my vision,” Suzuki said of the lights at Truist Park, per the Tribune. “But ever since I was playing in Japan, you do have to take that into consideration whenever you go out there in right field. So if I do say that (the lights affected the catch), then that’s an excuse, so I’m not going to say that.”
What’s particularly rough is that it’s the kind of play that could happen at any other moment, and you barely discuss it later. Dansby Swanson dropped a pop fly this weekend, and we barely remember. Pete Crow-Armstrong lost one in the lights a couple weeks ago, and it was brushed off immediately. But because this one led to two runs scoring, completely a huge Braves comeback in a game the Cubs really needed to win, it’s going to stick. I hate that for Suzuki. I hate that for us.
Suzuki’s manager and teammates, of course, had his back after the game. For example:
I know that our fan-driven, overly-emotional instinct in a moment like that is to believe we just saw the end of the 2023 season – yes, that was my reaction – but the players don’t see it that way. It doesn’t have to be a forever-imprinted moment. Heck, it COULD be a galvanizing moment, with the players all rallying together to make sure one dropped fly ball doesn’t define all that they’ve accomplished in 2023.
Sure, there’s some wishful thinking in there. Sure, a lot of it is the reality that we work backwards to create narratives sometimes, and we’ll tell the story of this error based on what happens next, rather than this error causing whatever happens next. But I guess it’s also true that, throughout baseball, you do have these kinds of jarring moments that can move players in a variety of directions. Or not at all, which is maybe the “right” way to process it.
From here, the Cubs have five games left to make the playoffs. Let that be where this goes.
