Evan Longoria’s rare bunt helps Diamondbacks, a breakdown

The Diamondbacks have been snaking teams to death with their brand of small ball. This breakdown is brought to you by DraftKings. Now obviously they're down 2-1 in the series, but the one game they did win and majority of the playoff games they won have been in large parts due to their small ball. In the third inning, Evan Longoria bunts. He hasn't bunted since like 2014. He moves the runner to second base. And what that does is in his very next at bat, now with a runner on second base, he puts one down the line and it's past the third baseman who's playing in. And now the runner on second, Thomas, is able to score to give them another run. That's exciting. Look where he's playing. He's playing way in. My friend, my dear friend, Trevor Ploof, he texted us. He said, why are they playing Longo to bunt? And we responded, because he bunted earlier in the game. And he was like, what? Longo bunted? And the reaction time just aren't the same when you're playing that close and a ball scorched down the line. Now, I went to the footage and I found Josh Young, the third baseman for the Rangers. These are all the situations where there was a runner on second. There was no outs. He was playing third base and a ball got hit hard to him. And I wanted to see, is he ever playing up? And no. Look where he's playing in all of these, well behind the bat. That's where you would expect him to play on that Longo ground ball and it would have been turned into an out. And then I went, okay, well here's all Longos at bats, similar situations where he puts a ball down the line. Has any third baseman this year played him to bunt in this situation? And I watched all the footage and I said, no. They're all well behind the bat. Because Longo doesn't bunt until they got snakes fever and bunted. And now, Young is worried about the bunt again. He's worried about them stealing third. He's playing in. It leads to a run. And then you have Longo on first base. No outs. So the D-backs say, let's just do it again. Let's bunt Longo to second base. Give them the out at first. Now we got another runner in scoring position and it's just cyclical. And the snake is just wrapping itself around you, wrapping itself around you, small balling you to death. Because now you get a ball put in play and Longo, all 38 years of him, goes second to home on a single and scores another run. And bam! Can't believe it. He's smiling. You're smiling. Although they are losing the series. They're down 2-1. But it's just a fun example that one sack bunt led to two more runs just because the fear of a bunt was now put into Young and the Rangers' brains. This breakdown was brought to you by DraftKings. Thank you to DraftKings for sponsoring it. Thank you guys for watching. I appreciate it. Go the baseball. Go both teams. I'm rooting for both teams equally.