Jimmy broke down the slide controversy between Jeff McNeil and Rhys Hoskins with a deep dive into how different players approach breaking up double plays. It started with McNeil getting upset at Hoskins for what he thought was a dirty slide. Jimmy looked at it closely and found it was aggressive but within the rules. Other players, including former pros, agreed it wasn’t out of line. That disagreement got him curious, so he dug into McNeil’s own history of double play slides. What he found shocked him: McNeil almost never tries to break them up. In over 160 plays where McNeil was a baserunner during a potential double play, he consistently gave himself up without challenging the throw. By contrast, Hoskins uses his big frame to cause disruption, sliding late and forcing bad throws while staying within the rules.
It looked like a mindset difference at first, but Jimmy took it further. He examined the Mets as a team and realized most of their players do the same thing—pull up early or avoid interfering, even in tight game situations. The only Mets who consistently play hard in those spots were Pete Alonso and Mark Canha. He found footage of Francisco Lindor running right through the bag instead of sliding, and SNY’s broadcast mentioned the team instructs players to do this. The logic seems to be hoping the fielder misses the bag, forcing a tag attempt while the runner on third scores. Jimmy thinks that’s misguided and not how most of the league plays.
To confirm that, he ran the same search across MLB teams and found that most encourage their players to slide hard and try to break up the play. The Angels, for example, had plenty of examples of aggressive and legal slides. The only outlier similar to the Mets was the Mariners, and that looked like it may have been limited to specific players. Jimmy’s main conclusion: the Mets either misunderstand or misapply the rules around these plays, and it’s become part of their team strategy. He finds it frustrating, especially when it’s impacting how they compete in key moments.