1 day later, Pirates 1B explains wild Báez play

Anyone can make a mistake even if one is in the Majors, and that held true Thursday when Pirates first baseman Will Craig committed arguably the biggest defensive blunder of the season.

“Oh yeah. Yeah, as soon as I released the ball, I was like, 'Oh my gosh, what am I doing?' Like, I know better than that,” Craig said Friday. “That’s like simple baseball 101, but I guess in my mind when I saw [Javier Báez] kind of running back ... just kind of lost my mind for a second. Just kind of saw [catcher] Michael Perez looking at me and kind of just released the ball, and the rest is history, basically.”

With two outs and Willson Contreras on second, Báez hit a dribbler to third base. Erik González immediately scooped up the routine ground ball and threw it to Craig a few steps away from Báez and the first-base bag. Instead of simply touching the bag, Craig chased Báez back to home plate, which resulted in Contreras having an opportunity to slide safely into home plate. Báez eventually made it to second base on two errant throws. The play headlined a 5-3 loss to the Cubs.

“I watched it one time. Just to see the whole play. Didn’t get any better," Pirates manager Derek Shelton said. "Like I said yesterday, it’s a play we screwed up, and we’ll move forward. I guarantee you’ll never see it again. I watched it one time to see the whole thing. Move on past it. Today’s a new day.”

Although the Cubs were in a frenzy after the wild play, it left the Pirates in shock as they processed what they just witnessed.

Despite the blunder, Craig is still considered to be a great defensive-minded first baseman. In 2019, Craig took home a Rawlings Gold Glove Award for his defense with Triple-A Indianapolis. Craig initially got his start in the Minors at third base but has been consistent since making the switch.

Craig said he found it difficult to refrain from watching the video, which was replayed everywhere. It's not surprising considering Báez displayed his skill, speed and elusiveness in his baserunning wizardry.

“I tried not to. I knew it was gonna be all over, so I tried to refrain from it for as long as I could,” Craig said. "I wanted to try and take the most time to kind of reflect on the play and just try to move on from it as fast as I could. And the best way for me to do that was just trying to refrain from seeing that as much as possible.”