Jordan Schafer has made the most of his backup role with the Braves this season, and scoring the decisive run on a wild pitch in Wednesday’s 5-3 win against the Mets might have been a prelude to something more memorable.
Stealing home.
The speedy outfielder said if another team uses a defensive shift as severe as what the Mets deployed when Brian McCann was batting in the fifth inning Wednesday, Schafer is confident he could score on a stolen base.
“If they’re going to let me get that far down,” said Schafer, who was about halfway to the plate when Shaun Marcum threw the fifth-inning wild pitch, with third baseman David Wright playing where the shortstop would normally be. “That’s ridiculous, to play a shift that far. If they’re going to let me get halfway, I don’t think they have much of a chance.”
The pitch was in the dirt and squirted perhaps 10 feet away from catcher John Buck — not far, but far enough with Schafer so far down the baseline before the pitch arrived.
“We had a thing in spring training where a team did that (shift),” Schafer said. “I came back in the dugout and T.P. (first-base coach Terry Pendleton) was like, if they’re going to play that far over, you can walk down as far as you want. Nobody can get you, so…
“(The Mets) weren’t playing the shift that big at first, and then that pitch they, like, super-shifted and Wright was beyond where the shortstop would be. So I was like, OK, there’s two strikes, maybe he’ll try to throw a breaking ball or something, and it won’t have to get away very far. I mean, I basically could have stolen home, I was so far down. I was just looking for a ball in the dirt, and it happened that pitch.”
Schafer was hitting .305 with a .402 on-base percentage in 105 at-bats before Thursday, including .329 (23-for-70) with seven extra-base hits (two triples, two homers) in his past 34 games.
“He gives you energy, and a guy that can steal a base and can go extra bases,” manager Fredi Gonzalez said of Schafer, whose .408 OBP as a leadoff hitter was fourth-highest in the NL. “Yesterday he scores from third base on a ball that — did that ball even leave the circle? Just barely left the circle, and he scored.”
