One of the first things you teach young kids when it comes to fielding and throwing a baseball is to orient it with a four-seam grip. Not that it always works out that way, of course, because kids are…well, they’re kids. And even as players mature, certain situations require a throw to be made without time or ability to grip the ball properly.
But when we’re talking about the defending back-to-back NL Gold Glove winner handling a routine grounder from a guy with third-percentile sprint speed, making a clean throw shouldn’t be an issue. So when J.