Alex Cora calls Jackie Bradley Jr.'s miscue ‘a freak play'

Share

Jackie Bradley Jr. made one of the catches of the game against the New York Yankees on Saturday night. But the Boston Red Sox outfielder was also responsible for one of the bigger miscues of the contest.

In the top of the seventh inning, the Yankees had the bases loaded when Sox pitcher Darwinzon Hernandez generated a weak fly-ball to centerfield. Bradley Jr. made a nice basket catch on the ball to record the out.

But, the positives ended there. Bradley Jr. would go on to throw the ball to first base in an attempt to get Luke Voit -- who had strayed far from the base -- out before he could tag up.

There was just one problem. Nobody was covering first. The ball bounced into the dugout and plated two runs for the Yankees, who extended their lead to 8-3 on the play.

And after the game, Bradley Jr. was self-critical of his decision.

"It’s a play I shouldn’t have tried to make," Bradley Jr. said, per Bill Koch of the Providence Journal. "I should have just thrown it in where I was going to throw it initially and been done with the play."

However, despite those comments, Red Sox manager Alex Cora was a bit more forgiving of Bradley Jr. and called it a "freak play."

"That is a freak play," Red Sox manager Alex Cora said, per Christopher Smith of MassLive.com. "It’s a bloop ball. Our center fielder has range. Brock (Holt) goes to second. Xander’s lined up to third. Mitch has to line up to the plate if he catches it. And Jackie got to the ball and there was a play at second. He (Encarnacion) got back on time. Xander reacted to Voit who was right there. And so he pointed (at first). Jackie saw it and threw to first base."

"It was a bad base-running play by Voit," Cora would go on to say, per Smith. "It just so happened Jackie saw Xander pointing to first and he threw it and nobody was there. Nobody was wrong on the play."

Cora does have a point. Bogaerts was pointing at first base and had someone been covering the bag, Voit would have been out. Still, it was a mistake that the Red Sox could ill-afford to make at that time, and it did put the game further out of reach.

Of course, Bradley Jr.'s play wasn't the only thing that went wrong for the Red Sox in the loss anyway. The Sox ended up falling by a final score of 9-6 against the Yankees. Though they dropped the finale, they went 3-1 in the four-game series and managed to set a team record during the series.

Red Sox have been linked to these players in trade rumors >>

Click here to download the new MyTeams App by NBC Sports! Receive comprehensive coverage of your teams and stream the Celtics easily on your device.

Contact Us