Victor Robles of the Seattle Mariners was carted off in the ninth inning of Sunday’s game against the San Francisco Giants. Robles tracked a fly ball off the bat of Patrick Bailey deep into the right-field corner, sprinting 113 feet in just over six seconds and then laying out into the netting over the wall in foul territory. Incredibly, Robles somehow came down with the ball, although the catch had to survive a replay challenge from the Giants. This was an amazing feat of athleticism, to say nothing of bravery and hustle and all the rest.

Robles’s catch did not make MLB’s daily top plays compilation, and I can think of two possible reasons why: For one, by crashing into the netting to haul down a foul ball, Robles made it possible for San Francisco’s Luis Matos to tag and advance on what would’ve otherwise been a dead ball. This wound up mattering a lot one pitch later, when Wilmer Flores chopped a grounder through the right side of the infield and Matos trotted home to score what would be the game-winning run. For another, and more importantly, Robles fucked himself up pretty bad on the catch and had to be carted off the field; it was everything he could do after coming down to flip the ball in the direction of the infield and prevent Matos from coming all the way around to score on the fly-out. Perhaps MLB’s clip editors aren’t very comfortable adding to a celebratory highlight compilation a play that ends with a guy writhing in agony:

To the extent that Robles has fans beyond a handful of grieving Nats weirdos (me), this is part of what they love about him. He plays baseball as if every moment is an opportunity to do the big thing that causes everyone to hoot and holler. Historically, this has often sucked: The man has long been so thrilled with his own foot-speed that he cannot resist the temptation to show it off with an impulsive drag bunt, or with an egregious TOOTBLAN, or by taking an insane do-or-die route to a ball hit into the outfield. Sometimes, though, this irrepressible verve leads in genuinely valiant directions, and Robles gets the memorable result and the big huge pop from the crowd and the celebration he’s after.

It’s hard not to root for a guy like that, if for no other reason than because he is never not interesting. Just a half-inning before the catch, Robles took off for third with two outs and his team down a run, a risky maneuver that would’ve looked insanely bad if it’d ended with the game’s final out. It worked, and three pitches later Randy Arozarena brought him home with a double. It’s worth noting here, again, that the risk was not necessarily validated by the reward: Robles would’ve scored from second on just about any base hit, and could’ve moonwalked home from third on the double. To be fair to Robles, the play-by-play on MLB’s website says that his incredible catch did move the needle on win probability, reducing San Francisco’s chances of winning by 2.4 percent, although you’d imagine that second out would’ve been a lot more significant if it hadn’t put a runner on third. Anyway his teammates love his fearlessness. “He’s a dog,” said Bryan Woo, who started Sunday for the Mariners. “He puts his body out in a spot that probably could have been a foul ball, and he could’ve just let it go. But that’s not who he is. He’s got the respect of everybody in the clubhouse.”

This was a real Robles moment: An incredibly cool baseball play that showcases great talent and bravery but one that was not strictly necessary and that may have knocked him out of action for a while. His teammates, ah, don’t necessarily love that part. “Obviously, he made all that effort,” said Julio Rodriguez, who helped Robles to his feet and onto the cart, “but it’s a high cost.” With Robles hurt, the Mariners need a leadoff man and a right-fielder, extremely complicated things to cobble together mid-season, and for a team that has not had a very promising start.

For the same reason that it is generally unwise (though also valiant and cool) to anoint someone Mayor of Bozo Town in the first week of April, it is also maybe not a super-great idea to throw yourself into significant physical danger to catch a foul ball in your team’s 10th game of a 162-game season. But this is the Victor Robles experience: He’s not going to club 30 dingers or walk 100 times or bat .300; instead, he’s going to attempt to solve every baseball situation in front of him by going one zillion miles an hour, and dare circumstances to stop him. Sometimes they don’t! Sometimes they do, when an opponent is simply unflustered, and sometimes they manage it with an actual wall.