The contact play burns the Reds in the ninth inning as they lose to the Tigers

The contact play is baseball’s equivalent of an all-out blitz in football. 

When the contact play works, it creates a big play out of nothing. But when it doesn’t work, it burns a team. 

On Friday, in a 5-4 loss to the Detroit Tigers, the contact play burned the Cincinnati Reds. 

“We want to be perfect with it and do it 100% of the time with our success rate,” Reds manager David Bell said. “I know it hasn’t been that. But we’ll continue to take that approach with one out.”

With one out in the bottom of the ninth inning and a sold out crowd at Great American Ball Park, the Reds had outfielder Blake Dunn on third base and catcher Tyler Stephenson at the plate. Bell called the contact play, which instructed Dunn to sprint home right on contact. 

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But when Stephenson hit a ground ball right to Tigers third baseman Matt Vierling, the throw beat Dunn to the plate for the second out of the inning. In the Reds’ next at-bat, third baseman Noelvi Marte hit a single that would have driven in Dunn, but the out on the contact play prevented that opportunity. With two outs and two runners on base, Reds infielder Santiago Espinal grounded out to end the game. 

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There aren’t numbers available to the public about how often the contact play works for each team. A metric wouldn’t be able to determine whether Bell called the play or whether the runner on third base broke home on his own.

But this year, it’s felt like the Reds have been out on the contact play much more often than not.  

“There have been outs,” Bell said. “But with one out, it’s worth the risk. It’ll be an out anyway. I like our approach and how we’ve done that. We have made outs.”

Bell was weighing several factors when he called for the contact play on Friday. He said that he wouldn’t have done it with no outs in the inning, but the contact play “was worth it” with one out in the inning. 

Dunn has the sixth-fastest average sprint speed in baseball this season, and his elite speed gave him a good chance to beat the throw. In the minor leagues, Dunn successfully executed the contact play several times, and he had confidence in what he was supposed to do.

Stephenson typically hits the ball to right field, which would have given Dunn a much better shot to score. And the Reds were in the bottom half of their lineup, which hasn’t consistently produced runs this year. 

Bell also pointed out that if Dunn had stayed at third base, then Stephenson would have ended up being out at first on the groundout. Regardless of the Reds’ approach, there would be two outs in the inning.

By sending Dunn on the contact play, the Reds forced Vierling to make a play. Vierling has made more starts in the outfield than at third base this year, but he was able to make the play at third base to beat Dunn with the throw home. 

The Reds challenged the play, but the out call on the field was upheld.  

“I know I have the speed to score in that situation,” Dunn said. “It just took a perfect throw, perfect tag. I mean sometimes baseball, as everyone knows, is a game of inches and unfortunately, we just needed one more inch I guess to get into that situation and score. But I wouldn't change anything. I felt like I did what I needed to do to try to score. They just made a good play."

After Marte singled later in the ninth inning, the Reds had one more chance to drive in the game-tying run with two outs. Bell faced another important decision. 

Espinal entered the game to lead off the bottom of the eighth inning as a pinch-hitter for right fielder Will Benson. Since Benson has a poor .500 on-base-plus-slugging percentage (OPS) against left-handed pitching this year, Bell went to his bench to try to start a rally. 

Espinal came back up to the plate in the bottom of the ninth inning to face Tigers right-handed closer Jason Foley. Espinal has an even lower OPS against right-handed pitching (.425) than Benson has against left-handed pitching. Espinal’s OPS against right-handed pitching is also the second-worst in MLB among hitters with at least 100 plate appearances against right-handed pitchers. 

Bell had left-handed hitter Edwin Ríos available on the bench. Ríos got called up before Friday’s game after the Reds placed outfielder Jake Fraley on the family medical emergency list. 

Anticipating Ríos entering the game, the Tigers got a left-handed reliever up in the bullpen. Ríos, who has played in the big leagues for parts of five seasons, didn’t hit left-handed pitching well in Triple-A this year with the Louisville Bats. 

The Reds’ options were having Ríos face a left-handed reliever or having Espinal face Foley. Bell stuck with Espinal, a contact hitter who has seen more big league pitching this year. Espinal grounded out to end the game. 

“(Espinal) has been in that situation,” Bell said. “They also had a lefty up. We liked the approach we were taking off of (Foley). We liked leaving (Espinal) in for that spot.”

The final at-bat of the game underscored the lack of production that the Reds have been getting from their depth all season. While some of the team’s best players have missed time due to injuries, their replacements in the lineup haven’t made big contributions.

That’s one of the biggest reasons why the Reds haven’t been able to sustain much momentum during the first half of the season.