The Marlins scored three runs on a sac fly because weird things happen on Friday the 13th
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If you looked at the calendar today, there's no doubt you noticed it's Friday the 13th. A day that spawned a hugely successful horror film series, and one that superstitious folks don't like very much.
But, as everybody says, weird things can happen on Friday the 13th, and that weirdness can extend to the baseball diamond.
The Pirates, for example, entered the day 1-12 on their previous 13 games played on this fateful date. With that context fully in focus, watch this play from Friday's game with the Marlins in which Starlin Castro's routine fly ball to Gregory Polancosomehow plated three runs:
That proved to be a pivotal moment in the game, turning a 2-1 Pittsburgh lead into a 4-2 Miami advantage, and the Marlins would go on to win the game, 7-2. The Pirates' bad luck on Friday the 13th continues.
"Obviously, a shot in the arm right there," Marlins manager Don Mattingly told MLB.com's Joe Frisaro after the game. "That was a little bit of a gift there."
Miguel Rojas was the runner who scored from first on Castro's adventurous fly ball to right:
"I was trying to advance if he threw the ball over the cutoff man," Rojas told Frisaro. "He did. I felt I was in a good spot to take an extra base right there. All the credit to (Dillon) Peters to hustle down the line and score the run. At that point, I was just thinking about tying the game. But it turned pretty good for us, because we got two more runs."
As unusual as the scene above may have been, the concept of scoring more than one run on a sacrifice fly isn't new ... as we saw last season, involving Jacoby Ellsbury and the Yankees:
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... and back in 2014, off the bat of Wil Myers and involving Ellsbury and the Yankees (again!):
Weirdness. It's out there. It happens.