Jace Peterson doubled -- quite appropriately -- off the second-base bag
Well, the first of Peterson's hits was definitely not normal. In the bottom of the sixth, he smoked a pitch from
The ball ricocheted off the second-base bag and into right field for a very lucky hit. Give Peterson credit for that double though, as he really hustled to make it in safely.
"Those are some things that weren't happening for us that were happening for the other team," manager Buck Showalter said to MLB.com's Brittany Ghiroli. "It's not like we need a ball to hit the bag.
"I can give you about 10 other [examples] like that. But you can't let it creep in. We keep talking about all that stuff working in our favor, tonight. Got some things that kinda went our way."
That wasn't all for Peterson, though. A couple batters later,
It was simply a case of Peterson sensing an opportunity. "In that situation, I would have liked to go a bit before, but with the matchup, I thought that I didn't want to take the bag, and feel like I'd rather have the lefty on the righty to hit right there," he said. "But once they take a shift on the way over, it's wide open. So he was doing the wheel-around to try to get me, but nobody was at third.
"So when a team shifts like that you try to find a way to take advantage of it."
It was a savvy play by Peterson and, remarkably, the second day in a row in which he swiped third on a shifted infield. He pulled off a similarly sneaky steal against
Peterson had stolen third before, but never in a way like the past couple days. "Those were some of the two easiest I've gotten for sure," he said. "So I'll take them."
Fortune favors the bold, and so fortune favors Jace Peterson.