SEATTLE -- Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Daulton Varsho just submitted another candidate for catch of the year.
Varsho robbed Ben Williamson of a home run Friday night in the Blue Jays' 6-3 win over the Mariners at T-Mobile Park with one of the best catches of his career, and there’s plenty of competition there. So many of Varsho’s highlight-reel grabs involve him laying out for a diving catch or slamming into the wall at full speed, but this one was a flat-out robbery.
There’s an incredible sense of calm to how Varsho moves in the outfield, which is what made this play so spectacular. He slowly tracked the ball back to the warning track and coasted across the dirt before perfectly timing his jump, but even when Varsho leapt and made the catch just above the top of the wall, he wasn’t about to let everyone know.
“It’s one of those balls that’s up in the air for a while, so I’m able to get underneath it and find a wall. It’s kind of one of the easier ones, to be honest, just because it’s high,” Varsho said.
One of the easier ones?
Well, when you compare it to the catch Varsho made here in Seattle a year ago, maybe he has a case. Last season, Varsho slammed into the left-center wall at full speed to rob a hit. You could hear the loud, dull thud of the collision all through the stadium. Varsho enjoyed this year’s version a little more.
“Yes, a little more enjoyable than going face-first into the wall,” Varsho said with a slightly bigger smile than the one we saw after the catch.
While most players in Major League Baseball would have pounded their chest and bounced away from the wall howling, Varsho just tried to hide a grin. It wasn’t until right-fielder Nathan Lukes reacted and started to high-five Varsho that the rest of the stadium clued in and erupted, the cheers of Mariners fans who thought they’d just witnessed a home run swinging in the other direction while Blue Jays fans burst into a roar.
“Usually, you see those catches when someone robs a home run and guys are kind of digging themselves a little bit?” John Schneider said. “He just chucks it back into the infield. It is weird that he’s had so many of those chances and usually does pretty well with them. We’re spoiled as hell. He’s ridiculous.”
The reigning AL Gold Glove Award winner is already known around the league as one of the best defenders in baseball, but night after night, he keeps adding to his case. It felt like Varsho’s stumbling, behind-the-back catch in his April 29 debut would stand all season as his finest moment, but it only took him 10 days to raise the bar.