Pirates First Baseman Will Craig Finally Speaks On Insane Javier Baez Play

Pittsburgh Pirates first baseman Will Craig was massively trolled on Thursday after a boneheaded play allowed the Cubs to score a run.

Cubs shortstop Javier Baez hit a ground ball and the throw pulled Craig off the bag at first. Instead of just touching the base, Craig chased Baez between first and home, allowing the runner on third to score. It was one of the most ridiculous plays of all-time.

Javy Baez is a magicianpic.twitter.com/PSXBHZzQMx

— Awesemo (@Awesemo_Com) May 27, 2021

After Pirates manager Derek Shelton backed up Will Craig, saying it was OK to make mistakes, Craig took the podium to speak to reporters prior to the Pirates game on Friday.

The young first baseman acknowledged that he was being incredibly stupid during the play.

“I’m going to end up on a blooper reel for the rest of my life, probably,” he said in a Zoom call with reporters Friday afternoon via DK Pittsburgh Sports.

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Craig admitted that it was a terrible move to throw the ball to the catcher, instead of just touching the first base bag, or tagging out Javy.

“As soon as I released the ball, I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, what am I doing? I know better than that,’ ” Craig said. “It’s simple Baseball 101. But I guess in my mind when I saw him running back, I just kind of lost my mind for a second.”

The play was blowing up on social media, but Craig said he tried not to pay too much attention to all the jokes being thrown at him.

“I knew it was going to be all over so I tried to refrain from it as long as I could,” he said. “Friends and stuff were texting me, checking to see how I was doing and stuff, because they know that I feel responsible for it. I wanted to try and take as much time to kind of reflect on the play and just try and move on from it as fast as I could. The best way for me to do that was trying to refrain from seeing it as much as possible, give it some time to kind of settle down a little bit.”

It seems like Will Craig is doing the right thing by wearing the whole play on the chin. He’s not the first or last guy who will look stupid because of Javier Baez.

Craig is ready to move on, and he got some help from his manager, who called him on Thursday night to make sure he was alright.

“I felt really encouraged by that, for him to reach out to me,” Craig said of Derek Shelton reaching out. “He knows how much pride I take in my defense, how much I really care about it. Obviously, that play was a freak play, but he just wanted to make sure that moving forward.”

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