 This is a segment from my show called Jimmy's Three Things over on the Talkin' Baseball YouTube channel. I wanted to share it with you guys because it's wild. It's one of the more interesting and fun deep dives I've done. And to let you know that I do these kind of things over there every Tuesday on the Talkin' Baseball channel. Jake and Trev do series recaps. We got a lot of in-depth baseball coverage on Talkin' Baseball YouTube channel, so check it out. This one, though, I think a lot of people would enjoy. So I'm sharing it with you here. And then you can catch the rest of the episode over there if you are so inclined. Thanks. Topic number one. McNeil and Reese Hoskins, the fight. I did a breakdown on it. I was very interested in it. In my breakdown, this part kind of really made me think like, wait, what? Because they watched the replay. And then McNeil turns after watching the replay and he says, you think that's fucking okay. And you can see Reese is like, yeah. So there's just a disconnect between what's a good slide, what's a bad slide, what's allowed, what's not allowed, what's dirty, what's not dirty, what's aggressive and competitive and what's dirty. And McNeil seems to think that anything aggressive and competitive is dirty. Because a lot of MLB players that I reached out to, Trevor Plouffe who does Talkin' Baseball, and then he reached out to other guys like, that's not dirty. It's aggressive. It was late. But he's trying to break up the double play within the rules of the game and didn't get anyone injured. Dallas Braden tweeted out like, dude, learn to move your feet around the back. You just planted there. So the first thing in the rabbit hole, I'm just going to give you the rabbit hole that I went down in chronological order. Number one, this picture was flying around the internet from Braves fans saying like, well, McNeil's done a dirty slide too. Look at this slide. He's way offline out of the base path. So I said, all right, let's go find that play. I want to see if that, you know, if this is just a screenshot or is that really a dirty play? So I pulled up play and here it is. We'll go back hits it to second, McNeil slides and they run in each other. It's not dirty. He's really just sliding way early. Like if you want to say the cutoff of the grass, I don't know if my cursor on screen, the cutoff of the grass right there, that's kind of like early or late. Just an easy way to gauge. If you slide after that, it's a little late, aggressive. If you slide before that, you're giving yourself up because he's not really trying to get to the bag there. I think he didn't realize the shortstop was going to come into him. So I didn't think that was dirty. It ended up helping, but I didn't think that was dirty on McNeil's part to his credit. Now where things got weird is I went and I was like, well, let's see if McNeil has any dirty slides. So I went and I searched every time McNeil's been on first base and there's less than two outs. So the team is going to try and turn a double play and there's a ground ball to the infield. And I wanted to see what that looks like and what I found kind of blew me away and I'll just show you all the videos that I found now and what you're looking for is this place is McNeil's the runner on first and how he tries to break up double place. There is a 6-4-3 tailor ball. Guard to short. Velasquez makes another good play. Starts an inning. Hopper out to Adamus. Kalao won first. Right at Pena. Altuve with the easy turn for the 6-4 play ball. Right at Bernie. The turn by Diaz with Rojas. The flip to Castro. The off-balance. Double play ball. Right at Iglesias. The turn by Alberto for the 6-5. Kim will go to second for one on the first. And he will play ball right to Crawford. The turn. So as you can see, he doesn't try to break up the double play. It's almost like it's not an option in his head. I watched 160 instances in his career. And I had to cut a lot down because this got too long. A lot of them look like this. Play ball right at Bullgarth's. And the turn by Gonzalez. The turn. There's one on the first. Double play. That's why he did it. You saw him move into the spot and it started. Guard to McMahon. I mean he's not even, he's being considerate. He's being gentlemanly. He's saying, hey, I don't want to get in the way of what you guys were doing. You want to turn the double play? Go ahead and turn it. Who am I to try to stop it? Go to second. And ready. Donaldson on the back end. Out at second. And there's the grounder. Come on, go to second for one. On four. Harrison Garcia. Down to third. Walls goes to second for one. Low. Headic. Headic to Crawford. Crawford. B2. Obbies to right. What was the hat? You know, what was that one? If I go backwards here, when I was finding these, there was something like that where he just runs straight through, doesn't slide at all. He never really tries to slide and get to the bag. He's not really trying to get in the way. So that was really weird to me and kind of eye-opening. Like, oh, he's very respectful, so he thinks that you shouldn't try to break up double plays. And then I was like, okay, let's go watch what Reese Hoskins does, who's slower than McNeil. And McNeil has this like, reputation as like a blue-collar grinder, like tough player. So that kind of really surprised me to see all of that. I went to Reese Hoskins who's slower. I think 20%. I think Hoskins is like, I think McNeil is 50% in sprint speed and Hoskins is like 25%. So here's every time Reese Hoskins has been on first base and there's a grounder to the infield, less than two outs, so the team's going to try and turn and double play. And here's how he attacks it. So as you can see, what Hoskins does is he gets his ass down the line quick. When he gets to that cutoff point that I was talking about, he gets big like a bear, like you're trying to scare a bear. You know, throws his hands up, gets kind of upright with his chest and then drops down into the base. And as you can see on these highlights, he induces a lot of bad throws and breaks up the double play. He's never injured someone at second. That's a good example of what he does. He's never injured the player. You know, there might be contact, but within the rules and it's winning baseball. I mean, he's doing everything he can. He's like, hey, I don't have speed, so I'm not going to be safe here. Let me try and do everything I can to play winning baseball, and that's what he's doing. And this was, again, I had to cut this down. There was just a lot of examples of this where he's inducing bad throws, putting pressure on the fielder, and it's working. McNeil was the complete opposite. He was granting people double plays. I was very confused. I was like, this is odd. So, I have so many more of these from McNeil. See, I color-coded it. Pink was to the shortstop. Yellow was to the third baseman. And blue was to the second baseman. And, yeah, so Reese breaks up a lot of double plays by using his big body and getting to the bag down late. Again, he never hurt anyone. It's just that's... It's still part of the game. The rules didn't make this not part of the game, but I'm beginning to think the Mets might think the rules made this not part of the game. Because I kept digging, right? Well, first I wanted to compare Reese and McNeil. Again, McNeil is faster. Here's a ball, hit to the shortstop, and flipped to second base. Very similar play. Reese is already in frame, and he's sliding. He's not going down until he hits that cutoff point in the grass where McNeil is giving himself up way early, has no interest in being part of the play, and just says, there you go, go ahead, turn it. So that was wild. And then I was like, okay, let me find one in a close game, because that's unfair if one game doesn't matter and the other game is really close. So up top, you have Phillies. They are tied at zero in the bottom of the fourth inning base. It's loaded down below. The Mets are up two in the sixth inning. And I also wanted to find balls that were hit similarly. So if you see on my premier timeline this blue marker, that's when the ball hits the bat. I synced that up. And then the ball is hit to the shortstop. And as they flip it to the second baseman, you can see Reese Hoskins is in frame, and he's about to get big on him like a bear and then drop down to make it hard. And McNeil just comes into frame now and has no interest in playing competitive baseball on this play. Just gives himself up and makes it easy. And I was like, that's crazy. And then I wanted to make sure people didn't think I was cherry picking a bajillion. So I put two Reese Hoskins on the right and eight McNeil on the left. And again, this point where the blue marker is on my timeline is when the bat hits the ball. And if you watch through to when Reese gets to the bag, he's by the cut on the two on the right already. And McNeil is nowhere in frame on the bottom four and on the top four. He's like going down already and not really trying to break it up. So that blew me away, man. I was like, what's going on here? Is this just a McNeil thing? Is this a Mets thing? And then I was, I was, is this around the league thing? Like, what is this? Again, I sent videos to some players that I know and talked to and they were like, what? That is crazy. What is going on? They were like, Reese looks normal. That's like what you're supposed to do. So then I had to dig deeper because I was watching the Mets game last night and Lindor on a double play ball ran through the bag and then the announcers kind of talked about the strategy to that. But to be honest, I forget and I couldn't figure out what they, the strategy was. So I'm going to have to go find that footage right now because I couldn't prep it. Let's go see if I can find it. Okay, I found that it was a double play to end the first inning. Lindor just runs through the bag and they explain why here. Again, this is me hearing it for like the first time because I don't remember what they said. Play that ended at the bottom of the first inning. I'll be biased with the glove flip. And you see that Lindor does not slide there. This is something that is relatively new in the game. Players are being instructed to do this. Yes, and the idea is that if they don't get the out there, they have to go tag and they're running from thirds and a score and also another thing too. Okay, if they don't get the out, if they don't get the out, if they don't get the out, they have to go tag him and the runner on third will score. So if the, if the, if they don't get the out at second, so if the fielder, what? If the fielder botches the, like misses the bag with his foot, that's what they're preparing for? There's runners on first and second. So they're saying, don't try to slide and make this. What? Okay, standard strategy would be like, hey, try to do a late slide and make this dude uncomfortable turning this double play within the rules and without injuring him and if he throws the ball away, the runner that was started on second, that's that third, rounding third right now, will score on a bad throw, right? So force a bad throw or make him so uncomfortable he doesn't want to throw it away and he eats the play and doesn't turn to. They're saying their Mets are instructing them to casually jog through the base in case this dude's foot isn't on the bag so then he would turn around and go tag Lindor and while he's doing that, the runner on third will score. That's crazy weird. I think the Mets think you can't break up double plays. So I watched this last night. I was like, wait, what are you doing? What's happening? So then I went back into the deep dives and I found all the other Mets players last year that kind of have speed and should be hustling and breaking up double plays and I searched for instances when they would be tasked to make the dude uncomfortable to throw it so here's what I found. They all do it. What is that? There's not a runner on second that could be rounding third in this one so like that strategy doesn't even make sense even though it doesn't make sense already. This is a tied game in the third inning and instead of trying to make break up the double play the second for one over the first. Tied him up. There you go. Only down to third. Hayes goes cross body to second to the left side. Chance for two. The turn by Amp. Rivera high hop to second could tell for one. All right here. Perdomo. Martell softly hit but Vogelbach doesn't run well. It's a double play ball right to Seger. The turn by Semi. Double play ball right at Arsia. The turn by Alpy. Roll to third. Ground on a hop. Adonis nice play. Throw to second. Pick it. 3-2. Martell not running well and it's going to be a third of chance for two. Vargas to second. Sharply one hop by Anderson. He gets the on a second. Where was he? Where are they? What is going on? My only saving grace was and Mets fans if you're still watching. I'm so sorry. I was running this by Mets fans in the office being like guys what's going on. They said they never noticed this. Alonso and Canna last year. They acted normal. Grounded slowly to third to ran with the sidearm toss. That is the same as the Reese Hoskins slide. You know good job by Pete. He's at the cut of the grass. He's getting down late. He's throwing his arms up. He's trying to make them uncomfortable. Here's Alonso again. Look at this. Nice. So some guys I guess aren't listening to whoever's telling them to not do this. Here's Canna. And yeah, he's playing hard. He doesn't not want them to turn this. Look at that slide. And he gets the player here. I was Waldo. And that's legal. That's fair. Waldo's got to move his feet. You got to come through the bag. You can't just stand on the bag. So Alonso and Canna great stuff. And then I thought okay before I make this video I got to check around the league. I got to make sure this isn't widespread and just because the Yankees don't do it I've never noticed it. Or even Mets fans that I talked to they didn't even notice it. So I checked around the league and I'm going to give you guys the link to check. But yes, not every team is doing this. Sure, there's slow guys that they don't get down the line. They're not going to. There's kind of guys that might be injured or hurting or the game's lopsided but in most cases when it's a close game and you have a double play ball guys are trying to break up the double play. They're trying to slide late make that fielder uncomfortable within the rules of law and break up the double play. So that at least saved my soul a little bit but I don't know what's going on in Queens. It seems like they're instructed. I think maybe they have the rule wrong. So I will post a link to this search that I did for you guys so you can go check it out and what I did was here's all the parameters. So I did 2023 season. Okay. Balls hit to the shortstop in third baseman. All right. There's zero outs or one out. So you need to runners not on second, not on third runner on first. So you're going to turn to batted ball type ground ball and then just to because you get like 200 options to find better ones or you know to even like limited a little more. I did batting score difference three runs. So it's a three run game and then I did the exit Velo on the ball 80 miles per hour to 95 miles per hour because if it's over 95 they're going to turn that so fast that the runner doesn't really have time to get down there. But anywhere between 80 and 95 that's a double play ball where the runner has time with a lead to go make something happen and break it up. And then you can all you got to do is change the team. So you can check out how your team does this. The only warning I'll give is Mariners. You guys were very similar to the Mets but I think it's mostly you know Suarez from last year. But like man go to the Angels who last year were you know what they were in it for a while and then the last two months they weren't. They like they had 17 instances because we really dwindled it down and if you just watch a bunch of theirs I'll pop them all out and we'll just watch so you guys can see like if you want to do this at home this is how you do it just hold option or command open new tab and then you know just skip ahead to the ball and got down through the hands up tried to break it up. Yep. Hands up at the cut trying to get down very normal. Here we go Oh that was an error those will pop up you'll see those every now and then okay here we go right there hands up sliding late trying to break it up so Angels fans if you tuned in you know you got other problems you care about but this isn't one so this is what I did all last night I just checked every team I just didn't want to make a video about the Mets and have it be widespread around the league you know but if you do this same search and you find the Mets it's it's it's it hurts my baseball soul you know look at this what are we doing what is going on okay that one got botched what are we doing this is Nemo he's fast so yeah you can go to this search and I'll put the link in the YouTube and what are we doing and you can see if your team what the organization does do they tell people to break up the double play or do they tell people to run away and not try to make anyone uncomfortable and just give up and say oh you guys want to turn to who am I to get in the way very bizarre behavior I don't really get it and like I said it kind of hurts my soul a little bit to watch because just because you can't slide past the bag all you have to do is slide in the vicinity of the bag maintain contact with the bag and you're fine like Reese's slide was a legal slide the reason it looks dirty and I'll go back to the premiere video of it the reason it looks dirty is because McNeil bobbles this ball also McNeil just stands on top of the bag because I think he thinks you can't do this but you can you're supposed to like run through it all the time you see the second baseman run through the bag catch it and move their body forward with momentum now this throw wasn't great and then he drops the transfer so instead of watching out for the runner he's like you know worried about the ball maybe but he's just planted normally he throws that and that back leg comes up and that's what happens when Reese goes down instead the back leg stays down because he didn't throw it you know think about a throwing motion that leg would swing forward and he'd be on the other side of the bag Reese doesn't know he's going to bobble the ball he bobbles the ball a lot of people said that Reese cleated him and I was like what do you mean like he spikes weren't that up they're like the same level as the foot spikes up like get him in the shin and some of the videos I showed earlier they did have spikes up and then it is awkward that he lands on the other foot but again at the time Reese goes down he doesn't know baby's going to bobble this ball and stay planted with both legs he thinks he's going to throw the ball and end up on over here you know so it ends up it's bad and it doesn't look good but it's mostly incidental and it's still a legal slide I just think the Mets have been told that those slides are illegal and that's why we had this confusion you think that's fucking okay you're allowed to slide what's wrong with that alright that was Jimmy's first thing and to be honest I like these videos to be around 20 minutes and that was a deep dive into a first thing so I'm going to speed up the next two things Oakland's committing errors like absolutely crazy and Blanco through a no hitter I don't know if I'm going to be able to get into all of these that much so let's just speed through it I'm going to maybe I'll dice it up I'm going to search around I'm going to find some interesting stuff