The Yankees Turned An Inexplicable Triple Play In Buffalo After Some Minor League Baserunning From The Blue Jays

The Blue Jays second season away from Toronto continues in Buffalo this summer, after a few months down south at their training camp facility in Dunedin, Florida. And perhaps it’s fitting that they ran the bases like a minor league baseball club in a game at their AAA affiliate’s park against the New York Yankees.

Thursday night’s series against a team with a significant fan base in Buffalo drew huge cheers from the away team’s fans after the Jays turned a Vlad Guerrero Jr. plate appearance with two men on into a spectacularly silly triple play.

With one of MLB’s home run leaders at the plate and Bo Bichette and Marcus Semien on base with no one out, Guerrero hit a soft grounder to the third base side that Yankees pitcher Michael King fielded himself. He threw to first for the out, and then everyone on the Blue Jays carried on the Weird Baseball tradition of forgetting how baseball works.

https://twitter.com/MarlyRiveraESPN/status/1405669122755735553

The view from behind home plate truly sells how bad of a baserunning job this was all around, starting with the aimless lingering between second and third from Bichette after Semien returned to third on the groundout. That started a rundown for Bichette, which caused Semien to race for home in an effort to either, presumably, prevent that out or possibly score.

https://twitter.com/MarlyRiveraESPN/status/1405669122755735553

Semien was tagged out in a rundown of his own near third in plenty of time, however, and Bichette somehow didn’t take advantage of that play to reach either second or third base, both of which were now free. And so he was tagged out at third to cap one of the weirdest triple plays you’ll ever see.

And as it turns out, it stands as the first triple play of its kind in MLB history.

Sports fans in Buffalo getting a chance to see Major League Baseball is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. But Thursday’s game seems to given us an even more rare a play thanks to some extremely minor league action from the .500 ball club.