Roundtable: What’s the most impressive throw you’ve seen?

Appreciating a great defensive play in baseball is easy. Watching an outfielder rob a home run, or an infielder make a diving stop is pleasing to the eye.

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Those are flashy plays. They stick out in your memory. But one aspect of an exceptional defensive play that sometimes gets overlooked is a tremendous throw. This isn’t always the case. There are plenty of players known for having great arms. But sometimes that gets lost if it comes after a tremendous catch or a diving stop.

We here at Big League Stew have been feeling a little nostalgic for great throws lately. Maybe it was Yasiel Puig’s excellent toss against the Colorado Rockies that made us think about the topic. Maybe we just wanted to re-live some Bo Jackson and Vladimir Guerrero highlights.

We decided to capitalize on that excitement and figured it might be best to discuss some of the greatest throws we’ve ever seen on a baseball field. If you enjoy a cannon arm, this is most certainly the Roundtable topic for you.

RICK ANKIEL CUTS DOWN WILLY TAVERAS AND OMAR QUINTANILLA IN THE SAME GAME
Hall of Fame manager Bobby Cox once said Rick Ankiel possessed the strongest and most accurate outfield arm he’s seen in 50 years in baseball. That’s a strong endorsement, and it was backed up by two memorable outfield assists during the same game at Coors Field in May 2008.

In the first inning, he launched a 280-foot throw to get Willy Taveras as he attempted to go from second to third on a fly ball to center field. If you don’t recall, Taveras stole 68 bases that season. He was obviously fast and he was a pretty smart baserunner, but he was no match for Ankiel. Amazingly, Ankiel topped himself a few innings later with an off-balance 325-foot throw from deep left-center field to get Omar Quintanilla as he attempted to stretch a double into a triple. The ball arrived 3.10 seconds after release, according to a Hardball Times study.

Those two throws have gone largely forgotten because of when and where they happened, but they have been burned into my mind ever since that night. In my opinion, both equal or surpass all of the greatest throws that we’ve seen over the 30 years. It’s just amazing to think that Ankiel’s career as a pitcher unraveled because of control issues, because that arm was a pinpoint cannon from 300 feet away. (Mark Townsend)

BO JACKSON NAILS MIKE GALLEGO AT THIRD
Look, the history of baseball is filled with fantastic throws and trying to decide which one is the best is no small task. The great ones, well, they’re great for a reason and what separates them are small degrees of difficulty. That’s why I’m picking Bo Jackson, specifically his flat-footed laser to third base in 1993 in which he nailed a tagging-up Mike Gallego. We know how great of an all-around athlete Bo was, but this throw is just silly. It’s not momentum propelling Bo there. That’s straight-up arm awesomeness. The throw itself is spectacular, but his reaction afterward is a cherry on top. Bo was fired up. He said a few words we can’t repeat here. Nonetheless, we appreciate the excitement and Bo’s belief that he was unstoppable — because for a while there, he was. (Mike Oz)

DEREK JETER’S 1998 ALCS JUMP THROW
There are a number of defensive plays that come to mind from Derek Jeter’s career. There’s “The Flip” and the “The Dive” but those were fancy one-offs. There’s one play that Jeter made so many times it became his signature at shortstop: much like Michael Jordan had the Jumpman dunk, Jeter had the “Jump Throw.”

You know exactly what I’m taking about: Ball hit to his right, Jeter fields it on the run and plants with his left leg, leaps in the air and makes an off-balanced throw to first to get the out. It’s maybe not as physically impressive as a Puig dart from the outfield, but it’s still as athletic as it gets and more importantly, it’s the play we so desperately wanted the opportunity to make in our next Little League game. Why? Because it looked so damn cool.

[Elsewhere: Bryce Harper and Oliver Perez are trying hard to “Make Baseball Fun Again”]

Jeter never had a jump throw better than this one in the 1998 ALCS, deep in the hole at short to rob Indians third baseman Travis Fryman off a base hit. I can guarantee kids across North America spent hours the next day trying to replicate it in their backyard or at their local ball field, trying over and over again to look as cool as Derek Jeter. (Israel Fehr)

JOSE GUILLEN PRECEEDS YASIEL PUIG’S THROW AT COORS FIELD
Yasiel Puig isn’t the only player to make a freakish throw from that part of Coors Field. Jose Guillen and his arm unleashed a monster throw in 1998 when the Pirates were playing the Rockies. The two throws are actually very similar — they both nailed a runner at third base with chilling accuracy. I love that the title of the video on Youtube is “Jose Guillen’s mutant throw from the warning track,” because to throw a ball that far and that accurately with just an instant of reaction time, you might have to be an amazing baseball mutant. (Liz Roscher)

LARRY WALKER NABS FERNANDO VINA AT THE PLATE
Larry Walker might not have the numbers as a hitter to earn induction to the Baseball Hall of Fame, but he was more than worthy when it came to playing defense and the art of the outfield assist.

Walker had one of the best arms I’ve ever seen in person. I watched him throw out dozens of base runners in Coors Field in the late-1990s and early 2000s. It got to the point that I often couldn’t believe guys would defy the scouting report and choose to try to run against Walker. They almost always regretted doing so.

He led the National League in outfield assists with 14 in 2002 and finished second in two other seasons. The seven-time Gold Glove winner twice led the NL in double plays turned as an outfielder and finished in the top three in three other seasons.

[Elsewhere: For the first time this season, a position player took the mound]

One of his most memorable throws came on Opening Day in 2001, when he caught a fly ball off the bat of Mark McGwire and gunned down Fernando Vina at the plate in Colorado’s 8-0 victory over the St. Louis Cardinals. (Kyle Ringo)

VLADIMIR GUERRERO DOES HIS THING OUT IN RIGHT
Picking just one excellent throw to write about is no easy task. There are a number of players who have been blessed with laser arms who didn’t even make this list. 

That said, I felt Vladimir Guerrero needed to be on it. His arm out in right was one of his defining traits as a player, and it’s always fun to watch him nail someone who either naively ran on him, or thought they were fast enough to beat him. 

[Elsewhere: Dioner Navarro tried to blame this errant throw on the fans, but he was sold out by the ump]

I could have picked a number of Vlad throws here, but went with him firing a rocket home to nab Alberto Castillo. The most impressive part of the whole thing, to me, is that Guerrero isn’t able to get a running start or crow hop before he’s fielding the ball. He has to load the throw after cleaning making the catch and he is still able to throw out Castillo by a few feet. As the announcers in the video state, Castillo didn’t really have a shot. That’s what you get for testing Vlad’s arm. (Chris Cwik)

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