Baffling balk call against Mariners' Bryan Woo is a wake-up call for Josh Naylor

Before anyone grabs their copy of the MLB rulebook and prepares to dive deep, we'll save you the trouble: Yes, that weird balk called against Bryan Woo on Tuesday was technically fair, even if Josh Naylor was equally at fault for it.

As it was, that whole situation could have been much more of a nightmare for the Mariners. Arguing balks is a good way to get ejected, so Woo is lucky that first base umpire Bill Miller didn't run him as soon as he walked over to demand an explanation. And it was ultimately no harm, no foul when Woo got out of the inning unscathed.

Of course, the Mariners went on to lose 4-1 to the Padres to snap their four-game winning streak. And Woo was clearly frustrated by the balk, which made it sort of a tone-setter for a night in which he wore an L despite pitching seven strong innings.

Why Josh Naylor needs to be more careful to avoid getting the Mariners in further balk trouble

As to exactly why Woo was called for a balk in that situation, the explanation from Miller was that Naylor was too far away from first base when he received Woo's throw over from the mound.

This brings us to Rule 6.02(a)(4) of the MLB rulebook concerning when to call a balk: "The pitcher, while touching his plate, throws, or feints a throw to an unoccupied base, except for the purpose of making a play."

Both Naylor and Xander Bogaerts were positioned away from first base when Woo threw over, so he was indeed throwing to an unoccupied base and thus needed to have stepped off the rubber first. And while Woo arguably threw over for the purpose of making a play, there is a clarification that umpires must consider whether the runner "demonstrates or otherwise creates an impression of his intent to advance to such unoccupied base." What Bogaerts was doing was retreating to first base.

Dry stuff, to be sure. But it's worth getting into because of the key differences between what happened with Woo and Naylor on Tuesday and the successful pickoff that Naylor pulled off with Logan Gilbert on Sunday:

There was no balk called there, but Naylor was at least closer to first base on this play, and Gilbert threw over at a precise moment when Jose Altuve had extended his lead back toward second base.

One wonders if it was this play that Woo and Naylor were trying to replicate. Either way, it's for the best that it failed. The Altuve pick-off was kind of a one-in-a-million play to begin with, and now Naylor knows for certain that his positioning on throws over — which he said after the game is where he typically does set up — is liable to get his pitchers in trouble.

The goal here is not to throw Naylor under the bus. The Mariners signed him for $92.5 million primarily because he can hit, but also because he's one of the savviest ballplayers in MLB today. And as Mariners fans have learned from him by now, you can't be a savvy ballplayer without pushing boundaries.

Even so, the weird balk call on Tuesday was as much a "FAFO" moment for Naylor as it was for Woo. And only one of them is in a position to remember it every day.

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