Red Sox Stumble Into Rules Review Hell, Emerge With Inconsequential Run

In the hypothetical situation in which a fan is attending a baseball game in person and has to wait for a video review to be completed, what is the length of time the review can last before she might turn murderous? Five minutes? Ten? The umpires in Monday night’s game between the Boston Red Sox and Toronto Blue put this to the test with a 15-minute review of a baserunning debacle by the Red Sox that ended with the visiting team being awarded a run in the end.

But let’s start from the beginning. In the top of the seventh inning, with two on and no one out, Red Sox shortstop Nick Sogard smoked a 104.9-mph low liner that bounced before entering the glove of Vladimir Guerrero Jr. at first base. Guerrero threw to second for the force out; Red Sox catcher Connor Wong, who’d reached first on a single before Sogard came up to hit, was unhappily stranded between first and second, unclear on whether Guerrero had snagged the ball out of the air (he had not). The play resulted in only one out; Sogard reached first, and the Red Sox had runners on the corners with one out as Ceddanne Rafaela came up to bat.

On the first pitch of the at-bat, Rafaela flicked a ball into semi-deep center field. This is when things began to go very wrong. The Boston baserunners, under the mistaken impression that there were two outs—perhaps because the Toronto stadium scoreboard mistakenly said so—ran on contact. Blue Jays center fielder Brett Bateman easily caught the ball and threw to second as the Red Sox runner on third jogged across home plate. While the Blue Jays pitcher and catcher headed off the field, evidently also under the mistaken impression that there had been two outs, the infield sprung into action, throwing the ball to first for the third out. Toronto appealed the play, which is a form of making an out that is not to be confused with an instant replay review; in situations like a runner failing to tag, the umpire does not make the call at their own discretion and instead require the defensive team to explicitly appeal when relevant. And then they ran off the field.