It happens so rarely, you have to rub your eyes after you witness it, just to be sure that it did, indeed, happen.
But it did happen on Sunday afternoon at Great American Ball Park. Billy Hamilton made an error on a routine play in center field that led to three unearned runs for the Mets in the sixth inning, as the Reds lost to New York, 4-3, in the rubber match of the three-game series.
With one out and nobody on in the sixth, Wilmer Flores hit a fly ball toward the warning track in center off Reds starter Mat Latos. Hamilton drifted back, reached up, and the ball went off his glove. It was just the second error for Hamilton in 1,088 innings at the position this season.
“I thought it was hit softer than what it was, so at the last minute, I saw the wall, and I took a peek, and that one little peek did it,” Hamilton said. “But no excuses; I missed it. It was my fault.”
Flores wound up at second and scored on a single down the right-field line from the next batter, Curtis Granderson, tying the game at 1. Following a foul popout by Dilson Herrera, which would have been the third out of the frame had it not been for Hamilton’s miscue, Anthony Recker belted a two-run homer off the second deck in left to make it 3-1.
“It’s tough, because your pitcher falls behind, that’s an inning he should have been out of, the home run should have never happened to him,” Hamilton said. “I put it on myself for not making that play, and I’ve got to put it behind me.”
Reds manager Bryan Price said on Saturday that Hamilton is deserving of a Gold Glove Award with how well he’s played center field this season.
“You never expect those [errors]. You don’t expect it from average or below-average defenders, to drop that ball. However, they all do at some point in time,” Price said. “It stinks when it does [happen], especially when it affects the outcome of a ballgame. But as we know, for all of us who have watched him all year long, that’s not something he does with any regularity at all.”
For a team that entered Sunday with the highest fielding percentage (.988) and fewest errors (62) of any team in the Majors, another unearned run may have been imminent.
That run came in the eighth on a home run by Granderson against reliever J.J. Hoover. Reds first baseman Jack Hannahan dropped a foul popup earlier in Granderson’s at-bat.
“Two plays that those guys are going to make 999 out of a thousand times,” Price said.
Overall, Latos had his best outing in his last three after allowing nine earned runs in 12 innings (6.75 ERA) over his previous two starts. The right-hander gave up seven hits while walking one and striking out five over six innings.
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