A lifetime of baseball distilled into 2 blinks, and Mike Jirschele got ‘em both right
Mike Jirschele has been in professional baseball longer than he’s done anything else in his life, other than loving his wife (they started dating in high school).
He played in 999 minor-league games, coming within a fluke injury on a routine popup of a big-league promotion. He managed another 2,500 or so minor-league games and has since been the third base coach for 810 Royals regular-season games and their 31 postseason games in 2014 and 2015.
That’s more than 4,000 games, spanning some 13,000 hours over 43 years, from pro baseball’s smallest stages to its biggest.
All of that, and to most of the baseball world Jirschele will be remembered for two decisions he made in less than a second. A lifetime distilled into two blinks. What a cruel, cold reality.
Except that Jirschele got both blinks right.
“Well, I don’t know,” he said in a recent phone interview. “Sometimes you get lucky.”
Jirschele is joking, with humility, which is standard for him. This all comes up five years after the moment of Jirschele’s career, when he scouted, prepared for and then helped execute one of the most thrilling and important plays in Royals history.
Fox Sports Kansas City is running replays of the Royals’ World Series run from 2015. Game 6 of the ALCS — Jirschele’s best moment — will air Friday night.
The play was a symphony of the Royals’ best and most defining traits, spilling out in an aesthetically enthralling moment that literally shook Kauffman Stadium with noise.
The scene: bottom of the eighth, fresh back from a nearly one-hour rain delay, tie score. Cain led off with a walk. The Royals had prepared for this moment. Their advanced scouts noticed that on balls down the line, Blue Jays right fielder Jose Bautista made a habit of spinning and lobbing the throw to second base (over the cutoff man) to prohibit doubles.
It’s a fine strategy, except Bautista incorporated it even with runners on first base, presenting an athletic and smart opponent with an opportunity. Earlier in the series, the Royals had faced this exact situation — but the cinderblock-footed Kendrys Morales was their lead baserunner.
“I couldn’t send him,” Jirschele said.
This was different. Cain was the perfect player to be at first base. Jarrod Dyson may have been quicker in bursts, but teammates and coaches generally agreed that Cain was the team’s fastest player from first to third, or first to home, his long strides creating a glide effect, his years of training cutting the inside of the bags precisely.
Eric Hosmer roped a line drive that bounced 15 feet or so inside the right-field line. Bautista caught it on one hop and, just as the Royals’ scouts predicted, fired a blind loop over the cutoff man’s head toward second.
Cain had a strong secondary lead, sprinting toward second base immediately on contact. By the time the ball left Bautista’s right hand, Cain was halfway between second and third, maybe a little more. Bautista didn’t have much on the throw, so when Blue Jays shortstop Troy Tulowitzki caught it short of second base Cain was already halfway to home.
The throw had no chance. Blue Jays catcher Russell Martin caught the throw a few feet away from the plate. Cain was already sliding past, his rise from the dirt coming with a scream and punch into the cool air.
It’s remarkable that Cain was able to score from first on a single without running on the pitch, we all know that, but it’s easy to forget that the play wasn’t close. There was no tag.
We can measure everything now, so we know that Cain needed just 10.47 seconds to score, covering the last 90 feet in just 3.31.
“I felt it was a no-brainer,” Jirschele said. “We’re going for it right there.”
The play boosted the Royals’ win probability from 67 percent to 89. From there, Wade Davis closed out the ninth. He pitched on both sides of the rain delay, an almost superhuman move, and went into and out of trouble. The Blue Jays had runners on first and third with no outs, and second and third with one out.
The champagne popped after Josh Donaldson grounded out to Mike Moustakas, and it wasn’t too long after that someone made a crack to Jirschele about finally sending a runner from third.
The year before, you remember, he stopped Alex Gordon at third with two outs in the bottom of the ninth in Game 7 of the World Series against the Giants.
This point cannot be emphasized enough: Jirschele made the right call. Giants shortstop Brandon Crawford possesses a terrific arm and had the ball in shallow left as Gordon hit the bag. Gordon somehow outrunning that throw against San Francisco was only slightly more likely than the play being interrupted by a purple dinosaur.
The next spring, Jirschele joked with Crawford that he should’ve thrown home so everyone could see he made the right call. Crawford cracked back that he was waiting for Gordon to go.
“I think we would’ve ended the World Series in a rundown,” Jirschele said.
If that had happened, it’s hard to imagine Jirschele returning as third base coach the next year. And if that had happened, who knows if Cain’s play would’ve been the same?
Who knows the impact that could’ve had?
The hypotheticals stretch as far as you want them to, including Gordon not sprinting out of the box after hitting what looked like a single before the ball was misplayed by the Giants’ outfield. Jirschele admits that would’ve made his call “a lot harder,” but that’s one what-if he doesn’t have to deal with.
Sports can be heartless. We have dozens of examples of people who’ve given their lives to the cause, only to be ripped and remembered for a particular mistake. Jim Joyce and Bill Buckner might be baseball’s best examples.
That could’ve been Jirschele, too. He knows it. But he sleeps soundly, knowing that he nailed each of his two most important professional moments of the last 43 years.
This story was originally published May 14, 2020 at 5:00 AM.