César Hernández's bunt turned into a home run Tuesday.

It’s always funny when Little League-esque errors lead to an improbable home run, but Philadelphia Phillies’ second baseman César Hernández came up with one of the most ridiculous home runs yet Tuesday night. With his team up 1-0 on the Arizona Diamondbacks and the bases empty in the top of the eighth, Hernández tried to bunt for a hit. And then all hell broke loose:

Arizona pitcher Jake Diekmann reacted to this pretty quickly for a surprise bunt and had a chance to throw Hernández out, but his throw was in the dirt and got by first baseman Paul Goldschmitt. And Hernández just kept running hard, sprinting to second and then on to third while right fielder Steven Souza Jr. retrieved the ball. Souza then threw to third, but his panicked throw sailed way high and into the stands, leading to the umpires awarding Hernández home plate and producing an inside-the-park home run on a bunt.

This was scored as reaching on an error and advancing on another error rather than bunting for a base hit, but hey, it worked out pretty well for Hernández, even if it won’t count that way for him in the statistics. And this is one kind of bunt results that it’s hard to argue with even from a sabermetric point of view. It also helped the Phillies break this one open; they scored three more runs in the eighth to take a 5-0 lead into the ninth. And it all started with a bizarre sequence of events that stemmed from a bunt.

[Kevin McGuire on Clippit]

About Andrew Bucholtz

Andrew Bucholtz has been covering sports media for Awful Announcing since 2012. He is also a staff writer for The Comeback. His previous work includes time at Yahoo! Sports Canada and Black Press.