DeLauter Lets Aranda's Single Under His Glove and Takes the Blame as Rays Tie the ALCS

One ground ball in right field turned a one-run ALCS game into a three-run inning, and the man who missed it did not hide from it. Chase DeLauter let Jonathan Aranda’s seventh-inning single under his glove on Saturday night, Tampa Bay turned 2-1 into 5-1 in the space of two hitters, and Cleveland’s right fielder told ESPN afterwards to put the loss on him. The Rays won 7-3 at Progressive Field to tie the series at 2-2.

What exactly happened on the play in the seventh?

The inning was already leaning Tampa Bay’s way before the error finished it. Richie Palacios and Taylor Walls singled and moved to second and third on a double steal, and Yandy Diaz then refused an ABS challenge and struck out looking, which should have been Cleveland’s escape hatch. Instead Aranda lined a single past the diving Travis Bazzana into right field. Palacios scored, and DeLauter, charging the ball and loading up to throw home to try for Walls, allowed it under his glove, AP reports. Walls scored on the error, Aranda went to third, and Chandler Simpson’s sacrifice fly scored him for 5-1.

What did DeLauter say about it afterwards?

He took all of it, in his own arithmetic. “Put that one on me,” DeLauter told ESPN, per TSN. “You miss a ground ball and give up two runs, essentially give up three. It’s my fault he’s on third base. It sucks.” He added that the play is one that cannot happen, and reduced it to its plainest form: “Just missed it. Ground ball under my glove, that simple. Tied series. Another home game. Move on and come back and be better tomorrow.” Sports Illustrated’s read of the replay was that his head was a few ticks ahead of his glove, a fielder already making the throw before he had made the catch.

How did his manager and his team-mates read it?

Wider than DeLauter read it himself. Stephen Vogt said the ball may have snaked on his right fielder or skipped by him, and that he may have taken his eye off it, TSN reports, and he folded the play into a team night: a couple of unfortunate plays Cleveland usually completes, AP reports, which includes Bazzana’s own error at second base in the same game. Bazzana, who also hit his first postseason home run in the seventh, defended the man to his right without prompting: DeLauter has been unreal out there all year, by the numbers and by his eyes. The defence inside the clubhouse is genuine, and it is also the second time this series has needed it, after Jose Ramirez took the blame for two miscues that produced all three runs in Game 2.

Did the error actually change the result?

It changed what Cleveland’s rally could achieve, which is the honest version of the question. The Guardians scored twice in the bottom of the seventh, on Bazzana’s homer and Brayan Rocchio’s RBI single, to close to 5-3. Without Aranda’s run, the run the error created, that rally ties the game. With it, Cleveland was still chasing two, and Diaz’s two-run homer in the ninth, the swing that closed the night Diaz’s refused challenge had opened, settled the score at 7-3. TSN’s judgement was that the error probably was not a game changer on its own because of that ninth inning. DeLauter’s own count, three runs from one glove, is the stricter one, and the scoreboard maths of the seventh backs his version over the forgiving one.

Why does this series keep turning on one glove?

Because both teams are built to win the innings where nothing happens, and errors are the only cheap runs available. Tampa Bay’s first four hitters, held to 7 for 41 with three RBIs across the first three games, produced six hits and six RBIs in Game 4, AP reports, and Aranda, hitless in the series before Saturday, had three hits. But the two Rays wins that bookend the series have the same signature: Game 2 turned on Ramirez’s two miscues on the turf edge in St. Petersburg, Game 4 on DeLauter’s glove on a 46-degree night in Cleveland. Cleveland’s own October has already run on a rookie’s nerve before, when Gavin Williams closed one playoff game as an emergency reliever and started the next, and its pitching kept Game 4 close for six innings here. October keeps pricing the same lesson in both leagues, the one Logan Henderson’s two throwing errors taught Milwaukee’s opponents in the NLCS: at this level the ball you do not pick up cleanly is worth more than most swings.

What happens next for DeLauter and the Guardians?

There is no day to sit with it, which may be the kindest part of the schedule. Friday’s rain postponement removed the travel off day, so Game 5 is in Cleveland on Sunday, Parker Messick against Drew Rasmussen, and DeLauter is back in right field in front of the same crowd, AP reports. His first inning on Saturday had put Cleveland ahead, an RBI single off Nick Martinez, who then retired 10 straight and allowed nothing else over 5 1/3 innings. That is the whole of DeLauter’s Game 4 in one line: he scored the Guardians’ first run and let in the runs that ended their night, and by his own instruction, the second half is the one to put on him.