In the sixth inning at Busch Stadium on August 29, Oneil Cruz misread a fly ball off the bat of José Fermín and watched it fall right over his glove. Two-base error. The score went from 5-1 to 5-2, and the cameras caught Carmen Mlodzinski on the mound with the look of a man who genuinely cannot believe what he just saw.
The Pirates won anyway, 6-2. But the clip was already going viral before the inning was over.
A Routine Play That Should Never Be News
Fermín didn’t hit a sinking liner or a two-out bloop near the warning track. It was a lazy fly ball — the kind you catch in warmups. Cruz came out, misjudged it, and the ball landed in center field at Busch Stadium while Mlodzinski stood on the mound with nowhere to look.
The error pulled St. Louis within 5-2 with runners moving. Pittsburgh eventually got out of the jam, and Rafael Flores Jr.‘s three-run home run — his seventh of the year — in the fifth had already done the heavy lifting. Mlodzinski ended up the winning pitcher (7-6), allowing just one unearned run in 3⅓ innings, and the Pirates evened the series.
But the conversation that lingered had nothing to do with the final score.
This Isn’t a One-Off — It’s a Pattern
Cruz’s struggles in center field didn’t start on August 29. In 2025, his first full season at the position, he led all of MLB with 11 errors as a center fielder. Before that, he had already posted -17 Defensive Runs Saved in just over 1,200 innings in center — meaning he cost Pittsburgh roughly 17 more runs than an average outfielder would have over that same stretch.
Opening Day 2026 against the Mets had already set off alarms: Cruz misread two fly balls in the first inning and forced Paul Skenes out of the game early. That came after an offseason in which Cruz worked with four-time Gold Glove winner Kevin Kiermaier specifically to improve his reads off the bat. The numbers — and the clips from August 29 — suggest the work hasn’t fully translated.
Shortstop Jacob González didn’t help matters either, committing two errors in the same inning, including what looked like a sure double play. But when the Pirates talk defense, the conversation always circles back to Cruz.
The stakes make it worse: both Pittsburgh and St. Louis are fighting for a National League postseason spot. Every error in August carries a weight it simply wouldn’t in April.
The Paradox: The Same Guy Who Can’t Catch a Fly Ball Hits at the 100th Percentile
Here’s where it gets complicated. The Oneil Cruz who dropped that fly ball is also the same Cruz that Statcast ranks in the 100th percentile in exit velocity — averaging 95.9 mph per batted ball — and the 99th percentile in barrel rate in 2026. He’s slashing with an .835 OPS, 17 home runs, and 52 RBI in just 74 games. Those are numbers that matter in a pennant race.
When Pittsburgh moved Cruz to center field in September 2024 to make room for Isiah Kiner-Falefa at shortstop, Cruz was direct about it. «I’m good in center field now. I’m not coming back to shortstop,» he told reporters, per John Perrotto of Pittsburgh Baseball Now.
The defense hasn’t quite backed him up yet.
That’s the real dilemma for the Pirates. They don’t have a disposable outfielder on their hands — they have one of the most explosive hitters in the league stuck at a position that exposes him every time someone lifts a ball toward center field.
