Greatest catch ever? Using modern stats to retroactively evaluate Ron Swobodas sprawling dive in

June 05, 2024

Baseball, more than any other sport, asks us to balance our dual appreciations of the aesthetic and the statistical. We can quantify excellence with simple numbers — .406, 61, 511, 56 — and marvel at the intangible — Griffey’s swing, the way Jackie cut second on his way to third, the grace of Mays in center field.

As more and more figures pour into the game, we’re able to merge these two interpretations of greatness. The 2015 introduction of Statcast and its suite of statistical measures — exit velocity, sprint speed, route efficiency — has helped place the seemingly unquantifiable in context. But can we apply these tools retroactively?

Ron Swoboda’s catch in the ninth inning of Game 4 of the 1969 World Series is widely considered one of the best in history. Swoboda’s sprawling dive in shallow right-center on Brooks Robinson’s sinking fly ball meant the Orioles only tied the game instead of surging ahead, and New York went on to win the game in extra innings to seize firm control of the series. The Mets would cap off their miracle with a win in Game 5 at Shea Stadium the next day.

[ Watch “The Catch,” on desktop or mobile only at The Athletic ]

Swoboda’s catch stands on its own. It’s already immortal for every Mets fan, living on in memories of that miraculous season and in silhouette above the right-field gate at Citi Field. But what does an application of modern techniques to a 50-year-old catch do to enhance our appreciation of it?

The Mets’ Ron Swoboda remembers arguably the greatest catch in World Series history in our video “The Catch,” available on desktop or mobile for IOS only at The Athletic.

All we have for Swoboda’s catch is the grainy, high-over-home footage from the original broadcast. Still, we can glean two important things from this. First, thanks to Curt Gowdy’s timely note immediately before Tom Seaver’s pitch, is that the outfield was playing straightaway. Swoboda wasn’t shifted in either direction.

Second, with a handy stopwatch, we can measure the “opportunity time” for Swoboda to make the catch — that is, the amount of time from when the pitcher releases the ball to the time either the catch is made or the ball hits the turf — at 3.40 seconds, give or take a hundredth.

That’s helpful for our next task: finding a play that looks like it.

The first play that came to mind was Andrew Benintendi’s diving grab to save Game 4 of the American League Championship Series for the Red Sox just last year. But while similar in impact, the play itself is an imperfect analogue, not just because Benintendi made it in left field and not right. Alex Bregman’s line drive is hit lower, leaving Benintendi less time to make the play — and less ground needed to cover. The shallow fence in Houston’s left field mean Benintendi was closer to home than he would be in an average ballpark, or than Swoboda was in Shea’s right field. And that Benintendi is left-handed gave him a crucial edge in snagging a ball going to his right. He didn’t have to backhand it like Swoboda did.

An attempt to search Baseball Savant for a similar play in the Statcast Era turned up little of use. Estimates for the exit velocity and launch angle of Robinson’s ball to left field — do you even call it a line drive or a fly ball? — limited the returns. None felt like a good fit, and even then, there’s no publicly available catch probabilities for balls that fall innocuously into right field, as Robinson’s should have.

So we scanned highlight videos of five-star catches from the past two years; remember, catch probability has only been around since the start of 2017. We earmarked ones that resembled Swoboda’s, some closely, some just in certain elements. Without alternate camera angles or precise measurements for where Swoboda started on the play and how far he traveled to snag Robinson’s ball, we can’t know for sure. But we can place him within the context of these already measured plays to get a ballpark idea for how improbable his catch was.

Let’s look at a suite of plays similar to Swoboda’s.

George Springer, 2018

Yes, Springer’s catch is made traveling the other way, toward the foul line in right field, which makes it a touch easier as a right-handed player. But this gives us a sense of what 3.4 seconds looks like and the amount of distance Swoboda likely traveled to make his catch. Swoboda caught the ball lower to the ground than Springer and on a backhand, suggesting it was a little bit tougher than this one.

Adam Duvall, 2017

Like the play Benintendi made, this one had a little less hang time than Robinson’s ball in ’69. But between the 54 feet Springer had to travel and the 52 feet Duvall had to move here, we’re getting an idea of the low end of the distance Swoboda traveled to make his catch.

Mookie Betts, 2017

Jackie Bradley, 2018

A pair of plays made in the left-center gap by Red Sox Gold Glovers probably do the best job of resembling Swoboda’s. They’re both backhanded grabs made right near the turf, though both came on balls with barely more hangtime than Robinson’s. Bradley went 59 feet and Betts 60. We can probably call that the high end of the distance Swoboda traveled.

Put all this together, and Swoboda had 3.4 seconds to travel somewhere in the vicinity of 52 to 60 feet. Using Baseball Savant’s catch probability matrix, the low end of that distance equals a 25 percent catch probability; the high end is 0. Toward the middle, at 55 feet, the catch probability is about eight percent. That seems a reasonable ballpark number for Swoboda’s catch, though even that doesn’t account for the difficulty of making that play backhanded at a time when outfielders almost never left their feet coming in like that.

Diving to make a play in the 1960s was not really an option, especially on a ball in front of you; it was considered too reckless, and there’s a reason many of the best catches of the preceding two decades — Willie Mays, Al Gionfriddo, Sandy Amoros — didn’t involve outfielders leaving their feet. And while Swoboda isn’t the first outfielder to dive in for a ball, he perfected it at the biggest possible moment.

Now that we’ve got an idea of catch probability, let’s examine how Swoboda’s play influenced the Mets’ probability of winning the series.

As Seaver delivered his pitch to Robinson, with runners at the corners, one out and a one-run lead at the moment, the Mets’ chances of winning Game 4 stood at 63 percent — a far cry from the 92 percent it had been after Paul Blair led off the inning with a flyout, but still pretty solid. Throw in its 2-1 advantage in the series at that time, and New York’s probability of winning the World Series stood at 73 percent.

Swoboda’s catch didn’t lower either of those numbers, because the tying run scored. Robinson’s sacrifice fly brought the Mets’ chances of winning the game down to 57 percent and the series to 71 percent.

But that’s not the best way to examine the impact of Swoboda’s catch. Unfortunately, win probability can’t be calculated in the middle of a play, and so we can’t just look up what New York’s win expectancy was in the moment that Robinson’s line drive was sinking in front of a charging Swoboda.

On the other hand, we can look at how differently the numbers would have looked had that play gone differently.

If Swoboda merely lets the ball fall in front of him, like just about any outfielder would have done, the Orioles would have tied the game and had two runners on base with one out. New York’s win expectancy for Game 4, at that moment, would have been 41.5 percent. Its chances of winning the series, which stood up at 84 percent after the first out of the ninth inning, would have been down to 65 percent.*

*To measure this, we’re using a basic win expectancy calculator for the game. To figure out the Orioles’ chances of winning the series, we’re using The Baseball Gauge’s Championship Win Probability calculator. We had to find a different series with the exact same scenario in play — tie game in the top of the ninth, the road team with two men on and one out, down 2-1 in the series. Fittingly for this exercise, the Mets are involved in the historical comp — Game 4 of the 1988 NLCS. Unfittingly, that series did not turn out the way they’d hoped.

That’s what a conservative approach looks like. Swoboda’s daring dive upped the ante. Once he left his feet, there were two ways for the play to go — he either was going to catch it, or the ball was going to travel all the way to the wall and score both runners. Had Swoboda missed the ball on his dive — and again, this was a very real possibility — the Mets’ win expectancy for Game 4 would have plunged below 14 percent. And their chances of winning the series? All the way down to 55 percent.*

*Our historical comp this time: the 1906 World Series.

And so that Swoboda made the catch, that his sprawling, ill-advised dive was rewarded, improved the Mets’ chances of winning the World Series by 16 percentage points. For context, that’s just below the seismic shift of the 1986 World Series caused when Ray Knight scored the winning run on Mookie Wilson’s trickling ground ball down the first-base line.

When you combine the statistical with the aesthetic, then, Swoboda’s catch stands out as perhaps the most significant not just in Mets history, but in baseball history.

(Top: AP Photo)

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