BALTIMORE – The ball beat him.
That's how precarious Byron Buxton's stolen-base streak is. Buxton's speed may seem supernatural, may give him an aura of invincibility on the bases, but during the fifth inning of the Twins' 3-2 loss to the Orioles on Thursday, pitcher Dylan Bundy and catcher Caleb Joseph got the baseball to shortstop Manny Machado before Buxton could reach second base.
Of course, Buxton's speed adds significant pressure to the defense to be perfect, and the Orioles were not. Joseph's throw bounced in the dirt about a foot in front of Machado's glove, and it ricocheted off his thumb and past him, allowing Buxton to slide safely into second base, his first stolen base of the season — and more notably, his 25th consecutive successful attempt.
The play means Buxton is now halfway to the major league record for consecutive steals — Vince Coleman's run of 50 in a row for the Cardinals in 1988-89 remains the all-time standard — but it also illustrates why the young Twins speedster isn't placing much importance on remaining perfect.
"I don't, not really. I'm just kind of going out and doing my thing, and not focus on" the streak, Buxton said. "Sometimes you get lucky, sometimes not. If I've got a good feeling about it, I'll steal, and if I get thrown out, I get thrown out."
It's been nearly a year since it actually happened, and it was in this same ballpark, Camden Yards. Dylan Bundy was on the mound then, too, and Wellington Castro's throw seemed to arrive simultaneously with Buxton's hand, one of those plays that would have been difficult to determine, even on replay, whether second-base umpire Stu Scheurwater's ruling was correct. But Buxton made it easy on Scheurwater by sliding past the bag, too far to reach anything but shortstop J.J. Hardy's shoe before he was tagged out.
Had he been safe, Buxton could have finished the 2017 season 30-for-30 on the bases, shattering Chase Utley's 23-for-23 season in 2009 as the greatest without being caught, at least since caught-stealing became an official statistic in 1951. And his consecutive-steal streak would now number 32 in a row — or just four shy of his manager's best run.
"I obviously didn't have his speed," said Paul Molitor, whose remarkable 36 consecutive steals stretched from 1993 to 1996, ending when he was just four months short of his 40th birthday. "We've said for a long time, you don't have to have great speed to be a good baserunner."
