SAN FRANCISCO — All it took to end Tuesday night’s 4-3 win over the Diamondbacks was one flick of the wrist from Patrick Bailey.
“Obviously Pat can really change the game with his defense, like we saw,” manager Gabe Kapler said afterward. “There’s very few catchers around the game who can do that.”It took him a mere 1.39 seconds to execute that little flick of the wrist, or the fastest any catcher has gotten the ball to first base since Statcast began tracking the metric in 2015, according to MLB.com researcher Sarah Langs.
Even Bailey had never ended a game on a pickoff move. It’s been done by a catcher only 42 times since 1903, according to Baseball-Reference, though you only have to go back to 2022 to find the last time it happened. Keibert Ruiz caught Nick Senzel sleeping to clinch a Nationals win over the Reds on June 5. Like Bailey’s that play was challenged and held up under the scrutiny of video review.