Actually, you're the photo that you're using to advance your argument is a bit of a cheat, especially in response to the photo that /u/naked_as_a_jaybird posted. For one thing, your photo occurs later in time than his, so of course the player is closer to the bag by then. You can clearly see this because in your photo, Kang has already thrown the ball, and contact has only just been initiated between the two players, with both of Kang's feet still in their original, planted positions; in the latter photo, Kang's knee is now hyper-extended and his other leg has moved.

Okay, so we've established that since your linked photo is later in time, it showing a player as being closer to anything than the first is irrelevant.

Next, both photos were taken with long focal lenses (one is actually a still, while the other is a video frame, but that's largely irrelevant). Long lenses will tend to distort the perceived depth of objects in different planes perpendicular to the focal axis of the camera. Specifically, depth gets compressed, making the image look relatively flat (i.e. the objects of the scene look to the observer as if they are all roughly in the same plane) and objects that are further from the camera become progressively larger in size, and the depth.

Because of these effects, making any kind of distance comparison using this image, where all the action is taking place parallel to the focal axis, is pretty useless. In the other image, the action of the scene is unfolding perpendicular to focal axis and roughly on the same depth plane, and you can therefore much more easily judge distances.

Essentially, your photographic "evidence" to counter naked_as_a_jaybird's claim is extremely poor, regardless of whether the rest of your position has any merit or not.