The 2026 spring training schedule got underway this past weekend, giving MLB teams a chance to knock off the rust from the long winter.
Some teams might need a few more games to get up to speed, like the Chicago Cubs.
The Cubs took the field Sunday for their third spring training game of the season, in Scottsdale against the San Francisco Giants. But as the proceedings got underway there was a rather strange start to the game.
San Francisco left-hander Robbie Ray was less than five pitches into his start when the alarm went off, but the umpires instructed the two teams to simply play through the looping emergency message. But Ray conceded after the game that it was a rather unsettling way to work. “I was like, ‘We’re just going to play through this?’” Ray said after the game. “It kind of rattled me a little bit.”
Thankfully for Ray, the Cubs helped him out a few pitches later.
After Ray walked Matt Shaw and Alex Bregman to begin the game, he allowed a single to Seiya Suzuki in shallow right field. But instead of the Cubs having the bases loaded with nobody out, Ray was walking back to the dugout following one of the most bizarre triple plays you will ever see:
Suzuki tried to stretch this flare into a double, but first baseman Rafael Devers cut off the throw into home from second baseman Luis Arraez and threw to second, where shortstop Willy Adames was covering the bag. Adames snapped down a tag on Suzuki, and the Giants had the first out of the inning.
But the fun was just starting.
Shaw, who was on second when the play began, held up at third on the shallow fly ball and did not try to advance on the throw to second. Bregman, however, did try to advance to third on the play, and the Cubs ended up with a pair of baserunners on the third base bag.
Adames walked over to third and tagged both Shaw and Bregman. As the trailing runner, Bregman was ruled out by the third base umpire. But both Shaw and Bregman walked off the bag, with Shaw perhaps thinking the umpire had called him out too.
That’s when third baseman Matt Chapman, who had taken the ball from Adames, tagged out the leadoff hitter to end the inning.
“I don’t even know what happened,” Adames said after the game. “I couldn’t even look at it because we don’t have review on the iPad. But I know there were too many people at third base. There should be like maybe two guys there. There were like three.”
“Well, there were a lot of distractions going on,” Chapman said. “The fire alarm going off, people vacating the stadium. Just trying to figure out if that was real or not. And then some early baserunning miscommunication. Willy comes over and tags [Bregman] and gives me the ball. I think Shaw thought he was out, so I just tagged him. Not much more to it. Just early Spring Training, probably getting used to running the bases again, but we’ll take it.”
“That’s the beauty of baseball, I guess,” Adames said. “Every day you just see something new.”
