Philadelphia Phillies catcher J.T. Realmuto took responsibility for running into the final out of the ninth inning in Tuesday's 2-1 loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers.
The Phillies had Justin Crawford on third base and Realmuto on second while trailing by one run with one out in the ninth. Crawford was tagged out during a rundown after hesitating in going home on a soft grounder to third. Realmuto reached third on the play but then unnecessarily tried to go back to second, resulting in a chaotic game-ending 5-2-6-4 double play.
(Video source: MLB.com)
"Just a bad baserunning play, really," Realmuto said postgame, according to Todd Zolecki and Sonja Chen of MLB.com. "We were going on seeing it through there, and once Craw gets in the rundown and I'm on third base, there's no reason for me to go back to second. Just a lack of judgment. You can't make two outs on that play."
Dodgers manager Dave Roberts acknowledged that the play came down to fundamentals.
"Max (Muncy) did a great job securing the baseball, understood the tying run was going home, ran him hard back," Roberts said. "To be quite frank, Dalton (Rushing) should have run the player back. He didn't, but fortunately J.T. made an uncharacteristic baserunning mistake, and fortunately Mookie (Betts) threw a dart to second base."
Los Angeles also eliminated Philadelphia in Game 4 of last year's NLDS on a walk-off throwing error by reliever Orion Kerkering.
