Brewers Edge Padres 3-2 After Ninth-Inning Drive Hits Roof Cable
The Milwaukee Brewers beat the San Diego Padres 3-2 in Game 1 of the NLDS on Oct. 3 in Milwaukee, and the roof made the biggest out.
The NLDS — the National League Division Series, baseball's second-round playoff series — opened Saturday at American Family Field. Milwaukee took the early series lead with the one-run win The Guardian.
The weird part came in the top of the ninth. Milwaukee led by one with one out and a San Diego runner on first. Padres pinch hitter Ty France lofted a ball down the left-field line off closer Trevor Megill, the pitcher assigned to finish close games.
The ball never came down where it should have. It smacked a cable hanging from the domed roof, dropped back into fair territory, and left fielder Jackson Chourio caught it for the second out MLB.com.
Megill then got Jackson Merrill on a fly to right for the final out. Ballgame.
The call stood because of Milwaukee's ground rules, the special rules that cover each ballpark's quirks. At American Family Field, a ball that hits the roof, truss or cable over fair ground stays live. If a fielder catches it, the batter is out The Guardian.
The rules flip over foul ground. Hit the same structures over foul territory and it is a dead ball. Hit them over fair ground and land foul, and it is simply a foul ball.
San Diego challenged the play, asking the umpires to check fair or foul. The on-field call of out was upheld.
Neither dugout agreed on what might have been. Padres manager Craig Stammen said the drive looked like a possible home run if it had missed the cable. Brewers manager Pat Murphy said it would have drifted foul and would not have stayed fair for a homer.
France's ball left the bat at a 49-degree launch angle, a measure of how steeply it went up, according to the AP AP. That is almost straight up. Balls hit that high often come down in strange places.
Chourio had already shaped this game with his bat. He hit a two-run homer earlier to tie it at 2-2. On the mound, Milwaukee starter Jacob Misiorowski lasted four innings in his first playoff outing.
What makes this stand out is that it has happened before. In August, San Diego's Xander Bogaerts hit a drive that struck the catwalk at Tampa Bay's Tropicana Field. Rays third baseman Junior Caminero caught it. Tracking system Statcast projected that ball would have traveled 386 feet.
San Diego reached this round by ousting the Chicago Cubs in the previous series. Saturday's loss put the Padres in an early hole.
It was a full day of playoff openers. The Tampa Bay Rays beat the New York Yankees 1-0, the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Atlanta Braves 5-3, and the Chicago White Sox beat the Cleveland Guardians 3-0.
