My thanks to everyone who weighed in on this.
I agree that bad decisions were made prior to this play. For example, I kept wondering why Salty was still playing—seems he can't make an accurate throw to anyone but the pitcher, and he's struggled just to make contact with the bat. And one guy I don't see getting any blame is Uehara—giving up a double on your first pitch? To a guy who's barely played in the last month?
All of that said ...
Contrary to one of the commenters on this thread, I don't believe I'm merely "arguing semantics." If you're going to say that the right call was made, based on what the rule says, well then, no, they didn't have to make the call they made, because what the rule says (the "very likely" clause) is not absolute.
Besides that, it seems that more than a few people are ignoring all the wrong things that Allen Craig did on the play—pushing Middlebrooks down, for example—and not offering a sufficient answer to my main question: How is it fair to not even give Middlebrooks a chance to get out of the way? It seems to me that he was, in fact, trying to get up to get out of the way when Craig pushed him back to the ground. But I guess the runner can do whatever he wants?