The depth chart on Mets.com lists the same three players at both second and third base: Wilmer Flores, Jose Reyes and Asdrubal Cabrera. So on Wednesday, when Reyes and Flores were both scratched due to injuries shortly before the Mets’ game against the Yankees, manager Terry Collins was left with a dilemma. He had only one player to man two positions.
So Collins had Cabrera start at second base and enlisted catcher Travis d’Arnaud to play third. d’Arnaud, in his five-year big-league career, had played nowhere by catcher. In 2012 while at Triple-A, he spent two games at first base but otherwise exclusively caught. His main qualification to play third base was willingness.
But it turned out Collins didn’t plan to make d’Arnaud play third base all game. He intended to have d’Arnaud switch off between second and third, depending on who was batting. So that’s what the Mets did. With a left-handed hitter up, d’Arnaud would play third base and Cabrera second. When a righty stepped to the plate, the two would switch so that d’Arnaud manned the keystone, where he was less likely to have the ball hit at him.
The plan actually worked perfectly. Cabrera made a diving stop at third and caught a tough line drive at second, while d’Arnaud, using David Wright’s glove, had only one ball hit to him, an easy pop-up that he made look difficult before making the catch. (The Mets still lost though, of course.)
Here’s how the official box score read for d’Arnaud: 3B-2B-3B-2B-3B-2B-3B-2B-3B-2B-3B-2B-3B-2B-3B-2B-3B-2B-3B-2B-3B-2B-3B. That’s 22 position changes in a single game.
It’s fair to wonder what makes those changes substantially different from a nominal third baseman playing on the right side of the infield during an extreme shift, which happens fairly often. The answer is probably just that positions are a construct and we shouldn’t think about this too much.
Anyway, the Mets are calling up Matt Reynolds and Gavin Cecchini in time for Thursday’s game, so d’Arnaud can probably put away his infielder’s mitt. It was fun while it lasted.
