Hahaha. I just checked in on this thread to see what was up....how did we get here?
This will happen so few times it's crazy to think about, but let's go through the mental math anyways? There will either be a man on second with 1 out (if the runner doesn't go), a runner on third with 1 out (if he goes and is successful) and no runners on with 2 outs (if he goes and is caught).
If he doesn't go, the run expectancy of a man on second with 1 out is about .68 runs. If he gets there, it goes up to about .94 runs. If he's caught, it goes down to .09 runs. So you're trying to gain .26 runs by risking .59 runs.
So it seems like you should have to make it 70% of the time to make it worthwhile.
Our 3B last year made under 2 assists per game, not all of which were to 1B (obviously). How many of those occurred with a man on second base, and how many of THOSE occurred with a Dee Gordon type on second base that could actually possibly achieve 70% success rate in that situation? Not very many, maybe a handful...
And even this silly mental math exercise assumes this 1.5 second 6-3 throwing time, which is, OF COURSE, ridiculous. The 3B obviously checks the runner back to second base and throws behind him if he strays too far, so the real time the runner has starts at release to first base. A third baseman throwing 70 MPH is throwing 102 ft per second. So even if the third baseman was standing on the bag, his throw only takes 1.25 seconds or so, and considerably less on most throws. Since Zimmerman likely has 2+ seconds for this throw, there's a huge margin of error.
So there's one situation where we should worry about this, and to get there we are in the World Series playing the Royals, with Jerrod Dyson on second base and a grounder to third with less than two outs.
I won't lose too much sleep over it...
