NEW YORK – Braves catcher Tyler Flowers, even as he explained immediately after Monday’s game why he set up behind the plate to field a throw from center fielder Ender Inciarte, seemed to realize it was not the right way to do it, even if it’s how he’d done it before.
This time it didn’t work, as Inciarte made a near-perfect throw, but Flowers caught it behind the plate and had to lunge to attempt to tag Wilmer Flores as he slid. The umpire called him out, but the play was challenged by the Mets and the call overturned after replays showed Flores’ foot touched the plate in front of the tag.
Instead of the second out of a scoreless game, the play put the Mets ahead 1-0 with one out, and they went on to score five more runs in the inning, including a bases-loaded sacrifice fly that might’ve been the third out instead of driving in the second run. Two Eric O’Flaherty-issued walks later, Lucas Duda’s three-run double put the game out of reach.
And the play by Flowers was only magnified by each run that scored in the inning.
After the game, Braves manager Brian Snitker said he hadn’t had a chance to watch the replay yet to see what went wrong. He said Wednesday that he watched the replay and thought Flowers was not in proper position.
“I talked to Tyler,” Snitker said. “If he had to do it again he’d probably go at it differently. You just kind of set up on the plate, you give the base runner the back of the plate and set up for the throw, and in talking to him it’s like he was probably farther off than what he was trying to accomplish. On that kind of play I think if he had it to do over he’d probably be up on the plate more.”
Kurt Suzuki started at catcher Wednesday night in Game 2 against the Mets, a switch that Snitker said he decided on earlier in the day.
The manager insisted it had nothing to do with Flowers’ play Monday, that he wanted to get the veteran Suzuki some playing time since the Braves had only played two games — Friday’s exhibition vs. the Yankees — in the previous six days and could get rained/snowed out Friday at Pittsburgh. Suzuki is expected to catch knuckleballer R.A. Dickey’s Braves debut Friday.
There’s also a chance that Thursday night’s game against the Mets could be postponed since the forecast in New York is for heavy rain during the day. He plans to alternate catchers through the weekend series at Pittsburgh.
“With the night (off) after the first game, then the day off, I feel like it’s three weeks since we played a game,” Snitker said. “I kind of changed up this morning. I just kind of felt like coming out of spring training (Suzuki) had a really good camp, and I wanted to get him back out there. You start looking at weather and all that, I wanted to change and get him in there, so he’s not so far detached from competition. Once we get this thing going there’s going to be plenty of work for both of those guys.”
Flowers said after Monday’s game that he had used the strategy of fielding throws in back of instead of in front of the plate because it allowed him to gauge the throw and better control potential hops. His reasoning was that if you set up in front of the plate but ended up not catching the throw, then it wouldn’t matter what happened subsequently.
He said Monday was the first time he’d not gotten an out because of the strategy.
“Looking back at it, I would have played it a little more do-or-die,” Flowers said after Monday’s game. But, he added, “You can stand in the way and do whatever you want to do, if you don’t have the ball he’s safe. Priority 1 is trying to set yourself up in a position to be able to read the hop, eliminate the in-between hop. I like to be behind the plate, giving myself the margin for error that way and create your own hop, all the while anticipating wherever the plate is in relationship to you getting everything going that way.
“If I would have been in a conventional (position) in front of the plate, it would have been a tough play. You’re talking about an in-between short hop; maybe I get it, maybe I don’t. … I think in the long haul, the way we’ve been playing it and the way I play it, I think it’s the smarter play. I think it gives me a much better opportunity to secure the ball more often than not and give myself a chance to make a tag play, versus not even coming up with it.”
But upon further review, not just by the umpires but by the catcher and his manager, it sounds as if Flowers would not be set up in a similar position the next time such a play unfolds.
“That was a big momentum shift,” Snitker said. “Probably turns the game around.”
