Oh No! Outfielders Have Forgotten How To Play Defense! | Defector

A May 17 incident involving Shohei Ohtani against the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, initially treated as an isolated oddity, has been followed by a week of increasingly consequential inside-the-park home runs. On May 19, Washington Nationals rookie James Wood hit his first official grand slam, including an inside-the-park homer, after a ball ricocheted off Mets left fielder Nick Morabito’s glove and rolled back into center field. Mets center fielder Tyrone Taylor retrieved the ball and threw toward home, but Wood’s speed and the misplay allowed the run to score, and Washington won 9-5. Later that day, Corbin Carroll scored on another inside-the-park home run after a deep drive and a relay throw that failed to prevent the run.

"What seemed on May 17 like a funny, isolated incident, in which Shohei Ohtani scored a Little League home run (officially scored a triple and an error) against the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, has turned out to be far more insidious. No one at the time could guess what would follow for the next week. No one knows when it will stop. A day from now? A week? Never?"

"First, there was the Washington Nationals' James Wood, who, on May 19, notched his first-ever official grand slam off an inside-the-park homer. Naturally, this event took place against the Mets. The defining characteristic of this play was the ball ricocheting off the glove of Mets left-fielder Nick Morabito as he jumped to the wall and then fell down in front of his teammate, center-fielder Tyrone Taylor. While the ball trickled back into center field, Taylor stared at Morabito who pointed futilely toward the ball, before taking matters into his own hands and running for the baseball."

"No, in order to see a true Little League home run, we must look to Corbin Carroll, who scored on one that same day. Giants center fielder Harrison Bader got a decent bounce from Carroll's first-inning drive deep into left-center, and launched the ball toward third base. The relay throw, made nearly from the infield dirt, was accurate in a sense: Carroll, who had lost his helmet after ro"

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