Red Sox fielding errors result in Yandy Diaz 'Little League' home run

The Boston Red Sox aren’t a bad baseball team overall. However, to this point in the season, they are an awful fielding team, with 39 errors. That included multiple mistakes in one play that gave Yandy Diaz of the Tampa Bay Rays a little league home run.

On the play, the Red Sox defense decided to try for a play at the plate, which had no shot. This allowed Diaz to advance to second on what should have been a single. From there, Boston got wild with it, instead of eating the ball and cutting its losses.

Watch the Red Sox give up a little league home run, here:

Little League Home Run, def: a play during which a batter scores a run during their plate appearance with the aid of one or more errors committed by the fielding team. pic.twitter.com/K8YXxfDVn7

— Tampa Bay Rays (@RaysBaseball) June 4, 2023

Connor Wong, the Red Sox catcher, tried to make a play and get Diaz at second. The problem was that he whipped the ball into center. Jarren Duran, the team’s center fielder, wasn’t there to back up the throw because he had backed up the single in right. This gave Diaz time to score on the play.

It was almost as bad as when the Red Sox gave up an inside-the-park grand slam against the Toronto Blue Jays in 2022 because Duran couldn’t see the ball.

As the Rays’ Twitter account pointed out, this was the definition of a little league home run, tweeting, “Little League Home Run, def: a play during which a batter scores a run during their plate appearance with the aid of one or more errors committed by the fielding team.”

Even the Red Sox play-by-play broadcaster, Dave O’Brien even said that the play looked like little league.

This comes less than a week after Boston manager Alex Cora admitted that the Red Sox are not a good defensive team right now. This is, at least, in part due to moving on from shortstop Xander Bogaerts and attempting to replace him with Kiké Hernandez, who was previously an outfielder for the team.

After the game, Cora, a good defensive player during his playing days, took the blame for the defensive miscues. However, this is going to be a difficult problem to fix mid-season.

Kirk Herbstreit called a baseball writer a troll

College football analyst Kirk Herbstreit recently called a Cincinnati Reds beat writer C. Trent Rosecrans a troll after the writer and Ken Rosenthal suggested Reds star Jonathan India could be traded.

“This team hasn’t had a leader that pushed his teammates every day since Scott Rolen left in 2012 and we finally have that guy and you write this article???” Herbstreit told Rosenthal over Twitter. “India’s value goes far beyond the numbers. As excited as we all are about the young talent coming up India needs to be the ROCK and catalyst for years to come. Put De La Cruz in the OF and move on.”

Rosecrans took issue with this, asking Herbstreit if he read the article and implying that he doesn’t know anything about the Reds’ prospects. This frustrated Herbstreit, who took a final shot to end the argument.

“Never told you how to do your job — I don’t even know who you are. I’m a fan who loves his team you’re a troll looking for attention. Hustle back to creating clicks and causing trouble!”