The Orioles were going to take no chances. The stop sign was up even before the ball arrived at Alex Gordon’s charging glove. TBS also showed two other replays, so I, in turn, will show you two other replays: Because Alex Gordon stopped a runner from attempting to score, late in a 4-4 game.
But if you want to talk about Gordon, then we can just talk about Saturday. At the end of the season, I don’t think you have a “feel” for which outfielders deter runners the most, like you might have a feel for other things.
But deterrence requires certain circumstances, and you have to be looking for it. The same goes for good instincts and route-running, and on a decently frequent basis you can see a guy’s throwing arm at work. Good speed, you can observe on a lot of plays. Now, deterrence is a difficult thing to observe in real-time. While he was creating fewer outs, he was saving a ton of bases, and the value there is very much real. To that point, nobody had really been willing to challenge Gordon. Toward the end of June, I noticed that Gordon’s assists were down, but that his arm rating was still up high. Among regular outfielders, Gordon has one of the very best throwing arms in baseball, and that’s allowed him to pile up valuable runner-killing assists. Three and a half months ago, I wrote about Alex Gordon ’s arm.