Mike Tauchman and the money on the line
On a strained hamstring rounding third... or maybe not?
Everything was there for the perfect baseball moment. The bases were loaded with two outs in the ninth inning, and Cleveland’s Emmanuel Clase, one of baseball’s most dominant closers in recent years, was on the mound.
Miguel Vargas yanked Clase’s first pitch, a 100 mph cutter, through the hole between third baseman and shortstop. One run scored easily. Mike Tauchman, the tying run for the visiting Chicago White Sox, got a good jump off of second base and was being waved home.
Steven Kwan charged in from left field, and a strong throw and clean catch would end the game. The throw was to the left of home plate, forcing catcher Austin Hedges to play the short hop from one knee in foul territory. But Hedges had enough time to collect he ball, stand up, take a few steps up the third base line, and tag Tauchman out.
It is the makings of a baseball riddle. How did a bad throw still give the catcher enough time to record an easy out?
Well, on the step after touching third, Tauchman began to limp and hobbled some 60 feet before surrendering to the tag, slamming his helmet, and prostrating himself with his forehead touching the dirt. His right hamstring appeared to have given out.
Or did it?
The masses have always been susceptible to believing there are unseen hands influencing outcomes throughout history – Chicago is no stranger to incidents of such a nature truly taking place. And the allure of falling into conspiritorial thinking isn’t new. If there is one, there must be more. If there is one, how could anything be pure?
But in this age of instant access to information, we also have instant access to a larger dose of conspiritorial thinking than ever before. We let just about anybody gain entry to our brains on social media, something we wouldn’t do in real life. We’re able to tune out the loudest voice at the sports bar and the subway car preacher.
On social media, Tauchman’s misfortune was instantly another instance of red-handed impropriety:
“Check his burner phone for a DraftKings app.”
“Another rig job where the favorite wins by just 1 to not cover the -1.5 run line.”
“Dude clearly had money on the Guardians.”
“Bets, beta, bets…”
There’s an element of ‘every accusation is also a confession’ at play here: “Well, of course, they’re in on the take. Who would be dumb enough not to be in on the take? I would be!”
It’s rigged for ratings. It’s rigged for big markets. It’s rigged for gambling.
The latter of those three is, again, not new. But it has become more prominent simply as the number of people around the country with action on the games has never been higher since sports gamblings’ near-nationwide legalization. In just a few short seasons, American sports have taken the taboo out of the shadows and made it so ubiquitous that odds are touted during broadcasts as fans are encouraged to wager while they cheer.
While the games have largely stayed the same over this period – aside from baseball’s necessary speeding up – the way fans view them has changed. Is the game being played for the sole purpose of attracting action?
Are we just here to count hits? Total runs scored? See who wins by more than one? Once we have started to see the game through this prism, we only see the actions on the field as done with the knowledge of how they impact the money on the line.
In that world, there are no accidents or missteps.
The usual targets for ire are the referees and umpires. But it doesn’t carry much weight. Anybody who has ever watched a gaggle of refs huddle to sort through offsetting penalties on a punt or Laz Diaz’s umpiring crew requiring eight minutes to sort out a simple fly ball to left this week in Arizona can see that a grand conspiracy is beyond their abilities.
“My boy isn’t cleaver enough to hatch a scheme like this,” Frank Costanza said. You got that right.
They aren’t corrupt. Sometimes, it's just a combination of ineptitude, incompetence, and human error. The simplest explanation is most often the correct one.
A year after the White Sox were the saddest collection of baseballing men to play a 162-game season, there is little hope for a turnaround on the South Side.
Baseball Prospectus currently projects them to win 21 games more than they did a year ago, but still lose 100. Wednesday’s loss sunk them to 2-9. A year ago, they also spent April 9 in Cleveland, winning after scoring two runs in the eighth to improve their record to 2-9.
Tauchman, an eight-year veteran, was playing in just his third game of the season. A strained right hamstring meant that he started his first season with his new club on the Injured List. Batting last in the order on the cold night, he had three singles in four at-bats, the last one put two on and nobody out in the ninth.
“It’s unfortunate,” Will Venable, Chicago’s manager, said. “Hope Mike’s all right, and, obviously, the outcome in the game speaks for itself and is disappointing.”
“We knew it was going to be a close play at the plate,” Kwan told reporters. “It wasn’t really a great throw, but Austin corralled it… I saw [Tauchman] pulling up. And you never want to see a guy pulling up like that, especially when the game’s on the line. You have to know that was really hurting him.”
The game ended 3-2 to Cleveland in two hours and 37 minutes before a crowd of 12,997. The over-under was 7.5, and the moneyline was Guardians -175.
Thursday afternoon, the White Sox placed Tauchman on the injured list.
Ben Krimmel is a writer from Baltimore who lives and works in New York.