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Watch Oakland's Ramon Laureano throw a heat-seeking missile to get Xander Bogaerts out at third base
Oakland Athletics outfielder Ramon Laureano has played in just 56 MLB games, 48 of which came last summer when he was first called up to the bigs on August 3. Yet even in this limited amount of time, Laureano is already becoming somewhat of a legend thanks to his absolute CANNON for a right arm.
On Tuesday night against the Boston Red Sox, the Laureano legend grew in the top of the ninth inning, when Boston shortstop Xander Bogaerts hit one deep in his direction in right center field. With the A's leading 1-0 and with only 1 out, Bogaerts' blast appeared to be leaving the stadium, but it just caught the top left corner of the wall in right center. After taking a huge carom, Bogaerts looked as though he'd safely reach third as the tying run, but Laureano had other ideas, sprinting to the ball an uncorking a heat-seeking missile that's already the throw of the year in baseball. Have a watch:
The degree of difficulty on this throw is a 15 out of 10. The ball is rolling away from Laureano, who has to sprint forwards, scoop it and time the scoop so that he can still get some momentum going toward third to make the throw. And then he makes it on one hop. You can have your home runs and your bat flips, I'll take a play at the plate or a throw like this from Laureano to get a guy at third over those any day of the week.
In case you've not seen Ramon "The Rocket" Laureano's full body of work, please, enjoy: