Texas Rangers manager Chris Woodward blamed the team’s walk-off loss to the New York Yankees on the “little league ballpark.”
The New York Yankees and Texas Rangers were supposed to play on May 6 and 7, but both contests were rained out. As a result, there was a doubleheader on Mother’s Day.
In the first game of the doubleheader, the Yankees defeated the Rangers 2-1 on a walk-off solo home run by second baseman Gleyber Torres. The ball flew into the right field stands, with a projected distance of 36 -feet.
After the game, Rangers manager Chris Woodward credited Torres’ home run to Yankee Stadium, what he called a “little league ballpark,” saying that it would be an “easy out in 99-percent of ballparks.” The thing is, Torres’ hit would have been a home run in 26 ballparks.
Chris Woodward blames Gleyber Torres walk-off homer on ‘little league ballpark,” even though he’s wrong
A home run in 26-of-30 MLB stadiums is not an “easy out in 99 percent of ballparks.”
The Yankees first got on the board in that game, after a sacrifice fly by Giancarlo Stanton in the bottom of the sixth inning. But in the top of the seventh inning, the Rangers tied things up on a solo homer by Kole Calhoun to right field, which measured at 355-feet.
But in the very first at-bat of the bottom of the ninth with the game tied, Torres ended things on the fifth pitch thrown by John King.
Woodward tried to place blame on the short porch of Yankee Stadium, but it turned out that his bold take was actually wrong, because Torres’ homer would have counted in 87-percent of MLB ballparks.