One of the nice things about the playoffs is that there’s often just one game happening at a time. Don’t get me wrong. I love a summer day with a full slate of 15 games, but you are where your attention is, and there’s too much baseball happening in any one day for us to be present for all of it. When the whole of the baseball world gets compressed down to one high-stakes game, you catch little things that might otherwise have gone unnoticed.
During the NLCS, I noticed a little thing about Kevin Ginkel. It was about how he holds runners on second base, and man, does he hold runners on second base. Here’s the pitch that caught my attention:
This occurred during a fairly high-leverage moment. It’s the eighth inning of Game 4 of the NLCS. The Phillies are up two runs with Nick Castellanos at the plate. That potential insurance run on second base feels huge in the moment. (And it will turn out to be huge. In the bottom of the inning, the Diamondbacks will score three runs and take the lead. If Alec Bohm comes around to score here, this game likely ends up in extra innings.) In the midst of all this drama, at approximately the speed of light, Ginkel cranks his head all the way around like an owl. Here’s a close-up:
