How Ceddanne Rafaela faked out Red Sox starter with celebration on ‘incredible’ play

PHOENIX — A game that featured multiple defensive lowlights for the Red Sox on Saturday also featured perhaps the club’s best play of the entire season.

The clear highlight of Boston’s 5-1 loss to the Diamondbacks came in the fifth inning at Chase Field, when Corbin Carroll smoked a Lucas Giolito pitch into deep right field and had a clear home run robbed by center fielder Ceddanne Rafaela, who scaled the fence right in front of the ballpark’s iconic pool. Rafaela raced back to the wall and stuck his cleat into its padding it before reaching his glove over the fence and pulling the ball back for the robbery. Rafaela celebrated on his knees on the warning track as Lucas Giolito, in disbelief, exclaimed on the mound.

Carroll’s 100.9 mph, 404-foot blast would have been a homer in 25 ballparks (including Fenway Park). But it went in the book as a simple F8.

“Just an all-out do-or-die (play),” said shortstop Trevor Story. “He had no time for a misstep, timed it perfect. Just an incredible play.”

At the time, the Red Sox were trailing, 4-1, after Story had booted a potential inning-ending double play ball in the second. Giolito had been laboring and to that point, had already allowed a parade of hits and walks that put the Sox in an early hole. The starter, who has admired Rafaela’s defensive play all season, thought Carroll had homered when Rafaela descended from the top of the fence and dropped to his knees on the warning track. Rafaela’s celebration, hundreds of feet away, faked Giolito out.

“It was kind of far away from where I was standing,” said Giolito. “I’m looking out there and he climbed the wall. I saw the glove fully extend over. Usually when that happens, those are hard to bring back. What’s funny is that me and the rest of the infield were kind of far away from it, so after, when he was sitting down, I thought he didn’t get it. He had his head down. I thought he was like, ‘Oh, damn, just missed it.’ In reality, he was really pumped up and he was yelling out there.

“When he pulled the ball out and threw it in, it was like, ‘Oh my God!’ It was sick.”

Boston’s dugout had a better view of Carroll’s towering fly.

“He was closing the gap,” said manager Alex Cora. “I didn’t (think) he got it, to be honest with you. He backspin that ball really, really good. When he jumped, from where we were, we knew he got it.”

Rafaela said it was “probably” the best catch of his three-year big league career. Another candidate came in May, when Rafaela teamed up with Wilyer Abreu for an “alley-oop” robbery of Kerry Carpenter in Detroit.

“He does something like that it seems like, every week,” said Story. “I thought it had no chance of being caught and he brought it back.”

Giolito added: “He’s a premier, premier outfielder. In my opinion, the best center fielder in the league. He has proven it making extraordinary plays like that.”

Rafaela’s catch did not provide the necessary spark for the Red Sox in a quiet defeat, and it wasn’t even the last time the center fielder would play a major role in a key play. In the seventh, Carroll again lifted a deep fly ball, though this time to left-center. Rafaela and left fielder Jarren Duran — similarly to how they did in a costly play late last month in Baltimore — both drifted toward it before it fell in for a double that led to an Arizona insurance run.

“I thought I had it. I called it, and I didn’t,” said Rafaela.

Rafaela didn’t even have the only robbery of the night. Diamondbacks left fielder Blaze Alexander had a similarly impressive play on an Alex Bregman deep fly in the eighth, twisting his body to go into the stands and take back a solo shot that would have sliced Boston’s deficit.

It was one of those nights for the Red Sox.

“There’s nothing you can do,” said Cora. “You control your at-bats. We hit the ball hard in that inning.”