Nationals spam bunts at the pitcher to score unlimited runs - explained

It's Nationals versus Brewers and it is a tie game going into the ninth inning. Closer Trevor McGill is coming into pitch for the Brewers. He was one of the best closers in baseball last year and he'll be facing the bottom half of the Nationals lineup. But things are not going to start off well for McGill. He's going to start off by hitting Abrams here with this pitch to put the leadoff runner on. Tough result there and next up is Joey Weimer. So Weimer is going to take this first pitch here for a strike and between pitches we can see him getting his sign from the third base coach. What's he planning? And he lays down a bunt and it's a beauty. Ranjito comes in to field that. Here's the throw but Weimer beats it out. That was a perfect bunt by Weimer and believe it or not, he had never bunted before in his career. That's his first ever bunt and because of that the third baseman is playing way back. He does not think Weimer is going to bunt there. And not only that but watch how the pitcher McGill kind of falls off the mound after he throws. All his momentum is going that way. The third baseman's way back. So Weimer knows he's got a ton of space over there on the third base side. So next up is Luis Garcia who's going to rip this single up the middle to give the Nationals the lead and the speedy Weimer is going to go first to third. The Nats have scored a run here off of McGill but they want to keep it going. So next up is the number eight hitter Jorbit Vivas and the Nats are saying okay that last bunt worked out pretty well. We got the speedy Weimer on third base. Vivas isn't our best hitter so what if we just tried bunting over there again? So here we go. Vivas lays down the bunt. McGill feels it and he throws it to the backstop. Oh no! The Nationals score again and the pinch runner Nunez is going to go first to third. So they're right back where they started. And yeah just like last time the bunt goes to that third base side but this one's much closer to McGill and credit to him that he doesn't really fall off this time. I think he sees the bunt's happening so he goes right to the ball. Nice adjustment but then he just rushes this here. You can see he doesn't take the time to get a good grip on the ball. He just grabs it and just sort of chucks it towards the catcher and it's not even close. Definitely Weimer's speed rushed him there but look at Weimer's slide. He's not even close to the bag and then he just sort of goes boink. That's awesome but it's not awesome for McGill. He is feeling super frustrated. That's two runs on him now. Obviously just messed up that play. Still has yet to get an out and on the flip side I mean the Nationals just must feel giddy right now. They are in the exact same situation and in fact the new runner on third Nunez is even faster than Weimer and McGill is totally scrambled here so any guesses on what they're gonna do? So next up is Drew Millison on the first pitch. He's gonna show bunt but it misses high and McGill's like oh god not another bunt please. Please don't bunt this right at me. So here we go and it's another bunt. It's right at McGill and it's not in time. The Nationals score again. This is insane. I mean this bunt was not even subtle. Millis is literally just gonna bunt it right at McGill. He's like yeah what are you gonna do with this and McGill fields it cleanly but then he just goes for this shovel throw that just takes way too long so another run's gonna come in to score and to be fair to McGill Nunez is super fast so it would have had been a perfect play there to get him but he comes home to score and now here comes manager Pat Murphy. He has seen enough. The Nats have knocked the closer out of the game. Now I saw some people after the game saying that the Nats had the scouting report on McGill so I was curious. Had McGill struggled fielding his position before? Well I watched every ball hit to McGill in his career and for the most part McGill does a really good job. He really does a good job just throwing the ball to first as we can see here. Sometimes pitchers struggle with that but he has no trouble. Nothing suspicious looking there. He's even gonna turn a double play ball here which is a pretty tough play for a pitcher to make but the one thing that caught my eye is there were three times when McGill was sort of in an unusual situation and in all three times he makes odd decisions. On this first play here he's gonna field the ball and the runner's caught between second and third and he's just gonna immediately throw it right to the third baseman which allows the runner to get back to second and that's just a weird play because you should charge that runner in between but McGill just fields the ball and throws it like a hot potato to third. Just not an ideal play there and on play number two he does the exact same thing. Again he fields it and he quickly throws it to home as fast as he can. Now it works out on this one but again you know he's rushing this play. You should really charge the runner there. You don't need to go that fast and then on one more play McGill's gonna get it and again he rushes the throw to third. This time he bounces the throw which could have gone past the third baseman. Fortunately it didn't but again those were three times where he was in a weird spot and in all three times he's gonna rush the throw. That's not a ton to go off of but if you had a really good scouting team and maybe you saw something else like in a spring training game you could say hey we feel pretty confident this guy's gonna panic if he's caught in a weird spot and then back to the Nats game the Nats are gonna have a speedy guy on third so then you say hey I mean this is the perfect spot to try it out. And what did McGill end up doing? Well he's gonna rush that first throw just like he had with the other three so that is right on brand and then on the second one here I think he was just totally scrambled and and he's almost trying to not rush on that play. So yeah whether they scouted this ahead of time or they just realized it mid-game this is really great small ball strategy here by the Nationals.