Guardians first baseman Josh Naylor is one of the last people you’d think would be able to pick up a double on a soft groundball up the middle. But he did it on Thursday against the White Sox.
Naylor is slower than 79% of MLB players, according to Baseball Savant. In 417 career games, he has just 15 stolen bases and one triple. He isn’t usually the type of player who’s going to try his luck and dig for an extra base—except for on a very weird play on Thursday.
In the top of the seventh with a runner on third and one out, Naylor lunged at a breaking ball way off the outside corner and poked it back up the middle. The ball glanced off the hand of pitcher Aaron Bummer, trickled past him and then kicked off the second base bag and into center field. By the time Tim Anderson was able to retrieve it, Naylor had slid into second with a bizarre extra-base hit.
