It’s mostly forgotten now, on account of the drubbing, but after the Giants scored early against James Shields, the Royals tried real hard to also score early against Madison Bumgarner. By that I mean the Royals made two outs and then had a batter get hit by a pitch, but with two down and Lorenzo Cain on first, Eric Hosmer clobbered a centered fastball toward the left side of Gregor Blanco. Off the bat it was a screaming line drive, and it looked like a ball that might get the Royals back into the game, but Blanco managed to make some kind of sensational play and the inning was over.

As Hosmer batted, the Royals’ win expectancy was about 22%. When the catch was made, that dropped to about 20%. Had the ball found ground for a run-scoring double, the win expectancy would’ve jumped to about 32%. So the catch was worth about 12 percentage points, between made and not made.

What I ask of you, the audience: how difficult of a play do you think it was? Pretend you’re an Inside Edge scout. Categorize the play! I understand this isn’t something you do, so maybe as an audience you’ll suck at this, but I’m interested in seeing how the opinions come in. I guess I should show you the play and give you some additional information.

The catch, from one angle:

The catch, from another angle:

Here’s where Blanco started, and roughly where he wound up:

Here’s a different way of considering that, that doesn’t indicate much about depth but does feature a standing ghost(!):

Off the bat, the ball was in the air for about 3.87 seconds. It was hit something like 390-400 feet. Buster Posey celebrated, understatedly.

So then, what do you think? Difficult play for an average center fielder? Ordinary play for an average center fielder? Extremely amazing play for an average center fielder? Mets fans might end up skewing this, but to balance that out perhaps they’ve mostly stopped paying attention to baseball for the time being.