With Game 1 of the NLCS on the line Monday night and the bases loaded, Brice Turang saw a baseball hurled in his direction at 85 mph and made the reasonable, reactive decision.
He got out of the way.
One pitch later, he swung at a high fastball for a game-ending strikeout that secured a 2-1 win and 1-0 series lead for the Los Angeles Dodgers over his Milwaukee Brewers.
A hit-by-pitch would have plated a game-tying run and extended the inning. Instead, Turang’s strikeout ended the game. For this, there were online critics. And postgame questions at his locker about his ninth-inning at-bat.
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Turang responded in a manner not unlike his decision to get out of the way of a fast-moving baseball — with reason.
“It sucks,” Turang told reporters. “It is what it is. Natural reaction to kind of get out of the way, and there’s nothing I can do, I can’t go back.”
Turang then talked about the high fastball that he chased for strike 3.
“And then I was looking up at the top of the zone for the sinker, sweeper that he’s throwing,” Turang continued. “And he threw me a four-seam. And it took off. It is what it is.”
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Again, these are reasonable responses to reasonable actions.
Human beings aren’t wired to stand and willingly be hit by fast-moving objects when there’s an option to get out of the way. Expecting Turang to subdue his natural instincts to avoid harm is not reasonable. Neither is it to suggest that Turang should be ready and willing to act as a human target in a baseball game.
His third-strike swing, while suboptimal, was also reasonable. Sometimes hitters get the best of pitchers. Sometimes, it’s the other way around and they get fooled by one pitch while sitting on another. That’s baseball. And that’s what happened to Turang on Monday night.
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Game 1 was a thriller featuring a brilliant start from Dodgers ace Blake Snell and a sensational defensive play by the Brewers unlike any that baseball has seen before. It was not decided by Turang’s last at-bat. And he’s surely not to blame because he got out of the way of a fast-moving projectile.
This news was originally published on this post .
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