Sometimes You Have to Squeeze the Glove

Most of the time, you don’t really have to squeeze your glove when you catch the ball. At least, you don’t have to think about squeezing it. It’s an instinctual thing, and while it’s different if you’re a catcher, the whole point of the glove is to corral the baseball. It was designed just for that. The ball tends to stick in there.

That’s most of the time. Sometimes you really do have to think about squeezing the ball, though. Sometimes there’s geometry involved. I love the geometry.

I love thinking about the angles. How do I position myself so I can catch this throw and apply the tag in one motion? Should I wait on this ball, or should I circle around it so I can charge it and field it on a short hop? At what point do I give up on picking this throw and step back to catch it on the long hop?

Making a great play in the outfield is almost entirely about getting to the ball. As Outs Above Average has confirmed over and over again, an outfielder with great speed and a great jump can arrive early enough to make even the most spectacular play look routine. Here’s Pete Crow-Armstrong making a five-star play look like a walk in the park:

You’d never suspect that ball had just a 5% catch probability. And here’s Nick Castellanos on a ball with a 90% catch probability:

To put this in the most skeptical terms, the only thing an outfielder tells us when they make a diving catch is that they couldn’t get there in time to catch it on their feet. But while it’s not the most valuable skill an outfielder can have, the last mile problem is still an important part of the game. Finding a way to secure the ball while throwing your body after the baseball and into harm’s way is its own art form, and you can’t beat the angles. Today we’ll look at two catches that were improbable not because of the distance traveled or the hangtime, but because of the AP-level geometry necessary to get the ball in the glove.

We’ll start with a play Michael Harris II made just last week. This is by no means his best play. It’s got an 85% catch probability, which makes it a two-star play. But it may be his best pure catch:

Although Harris is an excellent center fielder, he gets a very bad jump here. It’s understandable; the ball is hit directly at him and it comes off the end of the bat kind of funny, so he has to freeze for a second. But once he gets going, he really gets going. He’s charging very hard, and because he has no time to spare, it’s not a pretty catch. He’s not diving straight at the ball. He just has to go down and get it in a somewhat lopsided fashion because he didn’t have time to chop his steps and time it up perfectly. He has to catch the ball and then catch himself with his glove hand in order to break his fall. That’s what makes the catch so amazing. He seems to be slamming his glove straight down into the ground right as the ball reaches it. There’s only a nanosecond window where the ball even has an angle to find its way into the pocket.

As the angle I’ll show you next makes clear, this is something of an illusion. Harris does secure the ball before slamming his glove into the turf, and he rotates it outward to make sure there’s leather above and below the ball when he does so. But he’s doing it all in one motion, and the timing is immaculate. It’s all the more impressive if you keep your eye on Harris’ knee. It’s tearing up a huge divot, because he actually crashes into the ground the moment before he makes the catch, jarring his entire body. Watch his eyes close and his hat snap down on his head from the impact. Just staying steady enough to make this play is spectacular. Managing to hold on to the ball as he smacks it into the grass so hard that it bounces several times creates another level of difficulty. And lastly, we must award extra credit because Harris does so, as always, with a defensive positioning card tucked into his glove:

This is its own skill, apart from getting a great jump, taking a great route, or having great speed. It’s a different kind of kinesthetic intelligence, less valuable maybe, but much richer in terms of its pure artistry. Even at the major league level, not everybody can do this. I’m sure plenty of players could’ve gotten a better jump on that ball. Maybe Harris himself gets a better jump on it most of the time. But it would be hard to beat that catch.

Cedric Mullins made this catch a month ago, and I’ve been watching it ever since:

Statcast gave this play an 80% catch probability, and you can understand why. Mullins never quite gets up to top speed. Whatever comes one step past cruising toward the ball, that’s where he is. It’s another two-star, and that’s nothing to sneeze at, but Pete Crow-Armstrong would probably make it look a whole lot easier.

Mullins was once a fantastic defensive center fielder, but he’s 30 now, and the numbers say he’s slowing down. Still, while he’s not as quick as he once was, he hasn’t unlearned the art of making an improbable catch. The official highlight doesn’t have the angle I like, so I had to make a screen recording from the original broadcast:

This is why I’ve been watching the play over and over again. I just don’t know how Mullins managed to keep this ball in the glove. Let me show it to you one more time, even slower, zoomed in on the glove:

The angles here are mind-blowing. Mullins can’t catch it in the pocket. He doesn’t have time to make that adjustment. Instead, the glove is angled slightly downward. Only the pinkie is parallel to the ground, and that’s where the ball hits. Because this is a big, floppy outfielders glove, the whole thing flexes even further toward the ground when the ball crashes into it. And yet Mullins somehow coaxes the plummeting ball into rolling uphill into the pocket. It’s by design. If he keeps the glove too stiff, the ball might bounce out. So instead, he uses the floppiness as a shock absorber. By letting the ball angle the glove downward this way, he can’t use gravity to keep it inside. Instead, he has to roll with the punch, pointing the glove straight down and fighting gravity as he squeezes the ball. Oh, and he’s doing all this in midair, and he has to maintain possession as he thuds into the earth. This may be a two-star play, but the catch itself deserves its own galaxy.