A mustachioed Jake Burger resembles a mall cop who doesn't get paid enough to run, and he twice lulled the Guardians into a false sense of security with his aesthetic over the last two days. He legged out his annual triple on Wednesday because Myles Straw was slow to collect the ball by the center-field wall, and then he beat out a double-play ball because Andres Gimenez turned two too leisurely in the fifth inning on Thursday.
Burger then flew too close to the sun by trying his first-ever stolen-base attempt on a left-handed starter and a defense-only catcher, and Cam Gallagher gunned him down at second with no replay necessary for the frame's final out.
In isolation, it wasn't a particularly costly mistake, or maybe it wasn't even a mistake at all. The White Sox had two outs, and Yasmani Grandal had a 1-2 count, so the Sox needed a break to eke out a run against those odds. Burger tried to be the change he wanted to see in the world.
Except then the White Sox failed to post another baserunner until the penultimate batter of the game, when Yoán Moncada reached on a pinch-hit single with two outs in the ninth. A busted Burger stolen-base attempt somehow ended up defining the game, at least a little bit.
Sure, other events held far bigger shares, like the bases-loaded failure in the second inning, or Tim Anderson's fateful error in the seventh, but I kept coming back to Burger. Unlike the other misfortunes mentioned, Burger's failed attempt was something we hadn't seen before, and yet it felt so familiar.
Mitch Hedberg had a joke about being a stand-up comedian who stayed in his lane.
I got into comedy to do comedy, which is weird, I know. But when you're in Hollywood and you're a comedian, everybody wants you to do other things besides comedy. They say, "All right, you're a stand-up comedian. Can you act? Can you write? Write us a script." They want me to do things that's related to comedy but not comedy. That's not fair. It's if as though I was a cook, and I worked my ass off to become a good cook. They'd say, "All right, you're a cook. Can you farm?"
And it's very much like the White Sox to ask a player who just emerged in one area to establish himself in another. Usually it involves a first baseman playing the outfield, so Pedro Grifol giving Burger the green light represents a refreshing change of pace.
Of course, you can't draw a direct equivalent because base-stealing is an action, not a role. It's not like Grifol gave Burger Billy Hamilton's old job, and it's not like the individual stolen-base attempt is limited to the fleetest of foot. Yasmani Grandal is eight for his last 10 in this department*, after all.
(*since 2018)
The moment just felt particularly cursed because Burger is producing beyond anybody's wildest expectations -- .278/.348/.747 -- and yet the White Sox are 7-18 in games he's started, so here's Burger, trying to do just a little bit more.
