Avila sticks to fundamentals to seal victory over Phillies

Baseball is an easy game, right? Throw ball, hit ball, catch ball. Tag runner out with ball when not on a base.

At least that's how easy Alex Avila made it seem while making the heads-up play of the game Friday night to preserve the Nationals' 2-1 win over the Phillies.

The stage was set for some late-inning drama. Entering the ninth inning, the Nationals had a 2-1 lead - thanks to Max Scherzer's stellar start and Juan Soto's sixth-inning home run - and were facing the heart of the Phillies lineup.

With Daniel Hudson pitching, Rhys Hoskins led off the frame with a deep double to right field, just missing a home run by a couple of feet and Soto's glove at the wall by a couple of inches.

Then Phillies manager Joe Girardi inserted pinch-runner Travis Jankowski as Hudson faced J.T. Realmuto, who represented the game-winning run at the plate.

After a five-pitch battle that saw Realmuto foul off three, Hudson sent a 90 mph slider into the dirt that was actually caught by Avila - starting in place of Yan Gomes, who is dealing with a right hamstring issue - and brought the count to 3-2.

Only, after catching the ball, Avila looked up to check on Jankowski at second base and noticed the runner had drifted off the bag into no-man's land between second and third.

Enter Avila's fundamental play and high baseball IQ. All you young catchers out there, take notes.

"Once the ball goes in the dirt and I get in front of it, looking up just to find where the runner's at," Avila explained in a postgame Zoom session with reporters Friday night. "He would've had a really good jump, obviously, if the ball was a little more in front and a pitch that I had to block rather than had the chance to catch, so just caught him in the middle there. Usually, you'll see the catcher in that situation will throw the ball or the runner will end up just picking one base and taking off. That's part of the reason why you don't see that play too often, but it's a pretty fundamental play, at least for a catcher, when the runner is caught in the middle like that, just running after him and running at him, kinda cutting off third and trying to get him in a rundown."

Avila took the ball and charged right at Jankowski, angling himself so the runner would have to retreat back to second base instead of moving toward third. He even threw the would-be basestealer a pump fake to try to make it easier on himself.

"Yeah, that's what ended up happening," Avila said. "I know for sure I gave him one pump fake once I was probably about eight feet away from him or so, just to see if he would break towards third closer to me after pump faking towards J-Hay. He did, but then I think he thought I was going to continue and then he turned around again. In my 13 years, I've kinda had a little bit of both on different teams I've been on, as far as a rundown play, whether you should have the ball in your hand, whether to pump fake, stuff like that. You want the runner to see the ball in your hand, and there's nothing wrong with a pump fake to get the runner to make a decision. That way it makes your job a little bit easier to make a decision. There are situations where you just give up the ball, but that was a situation where you're not giving up the ball until you have to, because that is the tying run."

What went down in the scorebook as an unassisted tagout by the catcher became the game-saving play, even while Hudson struck out Realmuto on the very next pitch.

"Tremendous play. What a head's-up play by Avila," manager Davey Martinez said. "You know, a veteran catcher that understands the game very well, he did everything right in that moment. He ran him down, made him pick a direction and stayed with it."

And it didn't go unnoticed by Scherzer, who was watching the rest of the game on television after being removed in the eighth inning.

"We're on a 15-second delay, so I could hear our dugout screaming," Scherzer said. "And then you hear our dugout screaming and then I'm like, 'What the heck happened?' So as I watched it unfold, I was like, 'Oh my gosh, we got him in a rundown!' And all of a sudden, Alex actually tags him out for 'two, unassisted,' which I've never seen before. So it's pretty cool to see Alex have to run all the way out there to tag out the runner.

"But no, that was just a huge play to be able to see that happen. They're really threatening right there with the heart of the order, and to be able to flip that into, one pitch later, two outs, nobody on, that just changes the whole complex of the game and puts us in the driver's seat. Huge play on Alex to be able to make that play, and we were able to win the game."

Right, don't forget that Realmuto was still at the plate with a full count and the chance to at least tie the game with one swing. No matter though, because the fundamentally sound and ever-focused Avila was already ready to get back behind the plate.

"Yeah, your mind goes to the next batter pretty quickly, at least for me," Avila said. "Obviously, that was a huge out. It takes runners off the base, first out and with two strikes already on J.T. there. So at that point, obviously, there's some excitement that we were able to kinda get out of that little bit of a jam. But then it was a 3-2 count, so in one pitch you have a guy on base anyways. So it was a matter of just moving on and there's still two more outs to get."

What was at the time a very stressful, high-leverage situation that could have easily been a boneheaded mistake by the fielder that turned into a disaster became an easy putout by just sticking to the fundamentals, even when that's not necessarily a situation that pros practice a lot anymore.

"I used to practice that in college," Avila said. "But you don't see it too much here because, typically, the runner will take off one way or the other and you get rid of the ball. But that's really it, and a little pump fake there just to see if he's going to make a decision one way or the other. And if he did, I would have given it up and we probably would've gotten the out still."

Even still, that definitely falls under the little things that Martinez hammers into his players' minds throughout spring training and into the season.

"We work on all of those things, rundowns, in spring training," Martinez said. "So they get it, they understand that that's what you do. You just don't throw the ball, you gotta run him. When he gets that far, you gotta run him and you gotta try to run him back to the base he came from, and Alex did a great job."

And now that the play was made and the game was won, we all can enjoy the visual of Avila running out to shortstop from home plate to make a tag.

"Yeah, Alex isn't the fastest, so for him to get a 2U, that's a pretty good one," Scherzer laughed.

His catcher halfheartedly disagrees.

"I'm sure I looked really fast running out there," Avila joked.

Keep it simple, sillies. Fundamentals win games.

* Major League Baseball launched its All-Star Game ballots on Thursday afternoon. Fans can cast votes via mobile devices at MLB.com, the team websites, the MLB At Bat and MLB Ballpark mobile apps, and on Google Search.

Fans during the initial voting period may submit up to five ballots per 24-hour period on MLB platforms.

Phase 1 ends on June 24 at 4 p.m. Then on June 27, the top three vote-getters at each position and top nine outfielders will be revealed. Which then moves the selection process into a four-day Phase 2 period.

The All-Star Game starters will be announced on July 1 and the full rosters will be announced on July 4. Pitchers and reserves are chosen by players and the commissioner's office

Nationals players listed on the ballot include:

Josh Bell (1B)
Josh Harrison (2B)
Starlin Castro (3B)
Trea Turner (SS)
Yan Gomes (C)
Victor Robles, Kyle Schwarber, Juan Soto (OF)

Click here to access the ballot.