The Cardinals hosted the Red Sox in a rematch of the 2013 World Series on Tuesday and took a 3-2 lead in the third inning on a sacrifice fly from Matt Carpenter. It wasn't a garden variety sac fly, though, as it was fielded by Red Sox shortstop Xander Bogaerts.
Have a look:
The @Cardinals lead tonight's #MLBNShowcase 3-2 in the top of the 4th. Here's how: pic.twitter.com/SgkRTMvd2t
— MLB Network (@MLBNetwork) May 17, 2017
So we don't see that often, but it happens on occasion with a deep left fielder and a rangy shortstop. Twitter user Gary Marbry used Baseball-Reference.com's play index to discover that this was the 134th sac fly to the shortstop since 1970. Only Rusty Staub, Brian Giles, Andre Dawson, Jose Cruz, Johnny Bench and Darin Ruf have done so twice. One man has now done it three times: Matt Carpenter.
It doesn't really show anything other than coincidence, but it's still a fun fact. Consider the stat of the day.
