Wednesday’s matchup between the Miami Marlins and the New York Mets featured a moment where Mets play-by-play voice Gary Cohen showed his frustration with what he believed to be a very dangerous lack of situational awareness from the Marlins.
The Marlins have not had very much success this season thus far, sitting at the very bottom of the National League with a 23-43 record coming into Wednesday’s game.
Plays like we saw in the third inning of Wednesday’s game may be why we’ve seen such horrible play from the Marlins. With two outs in the bottom of the third inning, Marlins starting pitcher Brice Garrett was able to get Mets catcher Francisco Alvarez to hit a ground ball to third base to end the inning.
The Marlins simply needed to either get the force out at second or throw it over to first. Marlins third baseman Emmanuel Rivera threw it over to second base to get the out and end the inning.
But Marlins second baseman Otto Lopez seemingly didn’t realize that there were two outs in the inning, throwing an errant ball over to first in an attempt to turn what he thought would have been a double play.
On the call of the play on SNY, Cohen was quite upset with this mistake from Lopez, calling him and the rest of the Marlins out for their lack of situational awareness and adding that this kind of play could “get somebody killed”.
“Rivera goes to second and gets the force, which is the third out,” said Cohen. “The inning is over. Nobody on the field seems to know how many out there are. I mean, come on. 5-4 force ends the inning. You can get somebody killed that way.”
"The inning is over. Nobody on the field seems to know how many out there are. I mean, come on. 5-4 force ends the inning. You can get somebody killed that way."
Gary Cohen was frustrated by the lack of situational awareness. pic.twitter.com/PkvFVLHI5l
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) June 13, 2024
It’s certainly a fair criticism from Cohen. Luckily, everyone was seemingly paying attention when Lopez threw the ball so nobody was hurt.
But given how far off-line the throw was, nearing going into the Mets dugout, the unnecessary throw certainly could have ended far worse had a Mets player gotten hit with the throw.
On the other hand, it is an honest mistake from Lopez. Albeit a pretty boneheaded one that left both he and the Marlins looking quite silly.
