I meant to talk about this in the recap but then Cito didn't do the double switch and I spent 300 words on that, and everything else kind of got skipped. Leading off the 3rd inning, Marco Scutaro took a walk but when he got to first, he just continued to second. I don't think I've ever seen that in major league ball. Kids ball, yeah, it is a normal play, there is a runner on third and player walks some team automatically went to second because it they tried to get you at second, the runner on third would score.
But in the majors? I'm sure it's happened before, but Scoot watched the pitcher as he got to first, saw he wasn't paying attention and just took off for second. He got to second before the middle infielders did. It was the definition of 'heads up' baseball, stretching a walk into a double. Gameday listed it as a stolen base, I guess that's likely as good a way of accounting for it as anything.
Scoot has been amazing this year, it seems funny to think how this winter everyone wanted us to sign a different shortstop. How many times did we hear 'he's just a utility player?' I think the utility player label is just a fan thing, I think baseball people know that players are players and limiting your view of what they can do by what role they had in the past is just silly. Anyway let's compare Scoot to the two guys people were wanting to replace him with:
Games Bat OPS+
Marco Scutaro 68 .302/.404/.440 124
Orlando Cabrera 65 .234/.285/.295 58
Rafael Furcal 59 .244/.314/.321 69
Add in that Orlando's defense has been awful, while Scoot has been as good as almost anyone's and we can be happy that Richard Griffin isn't our GM. Well, for that and 500 other reasons. But then, I was all for signing Furcal. At least his defense has been good. Obviously sticking with Scutaro was the best non move we could have made.