Heads up baserunning by Scutaro nearly leads to victory

Marco Scutaro is having a fantastic start to his 2009 campaign. He leads Major League Baseball with 15 runs and has a solid .306 average to go along with 4 home runs and 10 RBI. But what Scutaro did in the 9th inning of Saturday's ball game against the A's gives a deeper and more meaningful look into why he's a key cog for the Blue Jays...

Deadlocked in a 2-2 affair in the 9th inning, Scutaro walked (his 3rd time on base in the contest.) Aaron Hill followed with a long fly out to centre. Scutaro alertly tagged up from first base and managed to make it into 2nd safely on the play. The following pitch, he swiped third base rather easily, leaving him 90 feet away from scoring the winning run. His heads up base running nearly resulted in a Jays victory, had Alex Rios, Vernon Wells or Adam Lind been able to come up with the clutch game winning hit...

Though it will go largely unnoticed (mainly because he didn't wind up scoring the winning run), Scutaro's intelligent base running illustrates why he's such a valuable member to the ball club...