New York Baseball

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The Catcher Switched to Third. Then to Second. Then Back to Third. 22 Times.
By JAMES WAGNERAUG. 17, 2017

An hour and a half before the Mets’ 5-3 loss to the Yankees on Wednesday night, catcher Travis d’Arnaud was told he was needed to switch positions because of an emergency. This surely came as a surprise to d’Arnaud; in his 11 years of professional baseball, he has been exclusively a catcher, save for a two-game cameo at first base five years ago in the minor leagues.

But with second baseman Jose Reyes and third baseman Wilmer Flores both scratched from Wednesday’s lineup during batting practice because of sore ribs, the Mets needed d’Arnaud to handle something altogether different: He was told he would be starting at third, where he would be in the unfamiliar position of staring in at batters instead of crouching behind them.

“I was fired up,” d’Arnaud said.

What he was not, understandably, was prepared. So d’Arnaud sent David Wright, the team’s oft-injured third baseman, who has been rehabbing in Florida, a text message asking if he could use a glove Wright had left behind in the Mets’ clubhouse. And — oh by the way — if he had any advice.

“Use it well,” Wright wrote back. “Dive for everything. Stay low.”

So 45 minutes before first pitch, d’Arnaud took some ground balls at third base at Citi Field. His second surprise of the night came once the game started. To hide d’Arnaud’s defensive limitations, Mets Manager Terry Collins shifted him between third and second base throughout the game, depending on everything from the batter at the plate to the likelihood of a potential double play.

In other words, when a right-handed batter was up, the Mets shifted the lifelong infielder Asdrubal Cabrera, who started at second base, to third so that he could field a ball likely to be hit to the batter’s dominant side. When a left-handed batter was at the plate, d’Arnaud went back to third.

What resulted was 22 switches between d’Arnaud and Cabrera, and a box score that most like had few precedents in baseball history.

“It definitely feels like we switched that many times,” d’Arnaud said.

The Mets’ plan to hide d’Arnaud, however, was not foolproof. In certain double-play situations, like those with a right-handed batter at the plate, Collins and his coaches had d’Arnaud stay at third because he had never turned a double play.

“We just told Travis that in the case of a double play ball, just make sure you get an out,” Collins said.

Despite the dizzying number of switches, the plan worked for the most part. Cabrera fielded a handful of ground balls at third base when d’Arnaud was at second, and d’Arnaud did not need to turn a double play. In fact, he only handled one ball all night, a pop-up to second base in the ninth inning of the Mets’ loss.



The box score from the Mets-Yankees game Wednesday night.
“It was fun,” he said. “I wish we would have won, though.”

Collins said the ingenious idea of hiding d’Arnaud by shifting him around the infield was not new. He had been a part of a similar implementation of the tactic in 1976, when he was a minor leaguer with Class AAA Albuquerque, but he had never tried it in the major leagues.

“We had a catcher and were short of players and right-handers,” Collins said of the earlier experience. “I went to third and the other guy went to second.”

So before Wednesday’s game, Collins told the Mets players that it could be done. “I’ve seen this done before, and not that it’s going to work, but it was the only option we had,” he said.

D’Arnaud insisted he was not nervous handling two new positions. He had played all over the infield as a kid, he said, so felt could do it again at age 28. Quietly, he said, he begged for balls to be hit to him.

“I wanted to make a diving play or a diving play down the line or rob someone of a base hit like people do to me,” he said.