Monday Quickie - Rules of Engagement

 But you know, funny. Or at least funnier. 

There were two rules things that went on last night that I want to talk to here.

Boston vs Tampa - Dumb rule, ruled right. 

In extra-innings, Kevin Kiermaier hit a ball to the wall that should have scored, would have scored Yandy Diaz to give Tampa a lead.  But the ball caromed off of Hunter Renfroe and went over the stupid short walls in the Boston OF. The umpires got together and sent Yandy back to third even though he was well on the way to scoring. 

The thing is the rule is clear. Much like a regular automatic double, where the ball bounces into the stands or gets stuck in a wall or goes under a tarp, etc., if the ball bounces off a player and goes into the stands it's two bases from the time of the pitch. That's what's implied in the MLB rules and explicitly spelled out apparently, in the umps manual. There are other occasions where the two bases awarded are from the time of the incident, like a throw into the stands, but this is not one of them. There isn't anything to argue here in terms of whether the rule was applied correctly.  Hate it? Fine. Wrong? Nope.

Now should the rule be like this? Why does it exist? Can we change it?  All good questions. 

Why does it exist?  Don't know.  I'm not a baseball rule historian. Twitter bandied about a few ideas.  My thought it probably came from a time where there weren't always full sets of umps and there were games in weird parks late in the evening with no lighting and there was a pretty good chance you couldn't see where the runners were at the moment the ball went out of bounds*. If that's the case, since these things happen quickly usually, you can see how two bases from the pitch seems the best bad solution.

Should the rule be like this? Like I said... it's probably the best of several bad solutions.  I think the less discretion given to the umpires the better. While you open up the ability for umpires to make a good decision, you do the reverse as well. Rules should be as objective as possible to maintain the necessary consistency. 

Can we change it? So in my mind to change it we would have to find a way to change it that isn't "well let the ump figure it out".  I can think of three ways it could be done. (1) change all automatic doubles always to two bases from time it goes out of bounds. There's a lot of umps now and good lighting and mostly normal park - they can see where players are... or can they? They already huddle up for any throw OOB. This would be a lot of ump huddles and they'd still get things incorrect at times. Do you want arguing if a guy was a foot before 2nd or a foot after 2nd when it crossed the plane of the OF fence? I don't, at least not on every automatic double. This kind of extra rule work is exactly what the game doesn't need. (2) If the ball hits the OF wall first before caroming off a player then it's from the location of the players on the basepaths.  I like this one, just because it satisfies the "rule must change crowd" makes a reasonable amount of sense (1-2 extra seconds means more chance runners have gotten around), and it would happen so rarely it wouldn't effect much of anything, or (3) like (1) but we use the guys in the booth to make these decisions. Is this better or worse than 1? I think worse. You'd get more calls right but you wouldn't get ALL calls right and if not what are we doing adding all this time and effort? 

Astros v  White Sox - It's hard to rely on their good intentions

In the 4th inning Yasmani Grandal hit a ground ball to a drawn in Yuri Gurriel at first, he decided to go home to try to catch Robert trying to score from third.  The throw glanced off Gurriel and went past the catcher, scoring the run and giving the White Sox a man on first. 

The rule here is NOT clear, or at least it is not black and white and in fact it goes into two separate grey parts of the baseball rule book, ending with a umpire subjective call. 

The first gray area of the rules is the idea of "basepaths". We think a runner has to run in a straight line from base to base, or at least as best they can. But there is actually nothing in the rules that states that to be the case. With one exception the only time that basepaths actually come into play is when a fielder has a ball in his hand and is trying to tag a runner.  The runners path is set at that time to be a rough straight line from where he is when this starts to the bag he is trying to go to.  As you can tell it's a little fuzzy here and a couple feet in either direction is usually given, but it's there to keep a runner from making fielders chase him out into the OF. 

 The one exception is the last half of the path a runner takes to first base.  He's supposed to be between the foul line and the line in foul territory. This is to stop the runner from trying to take the first baseman out with a body block to have him miss a throw. You've all seen this come into play if you remember the Trea Turner getting called out play in the Series. Trea did what a lot of RHB do and run kind of very close to (or on) the grass until more toward the last few steps when they peel off. This is technically against the rules but no one cares because they aren't trying to hit the fielder. It only comes into play in a play like Trea had where the throw for whatever reason is impacted by his location in the path.

Since there is no thing as a "basepath" a runner can literally run anywhere until a fielder wants to try to tag him, this includes the first 45 ft or so toward first base which Grandal was not in when the ball hit him. So he could not be called out simply for being where he was, which was both feet in the grass which he got to by sort of running toward the classic 1B/2B hole from the left-handed batting box. At this point the umpire must judge why the runner was where he was. If he was there to intentionally disrupt the play he can be called out.  For example on a suicide squeeze the bunter CAN run toward the ball and stand between the ball and home, that itself isn't illegal (imagine if the fielders were on strike and just sat on the ground and didn't move) but assuming the play goes as expected and he impedes the fielders throw home the umpire should rule him out for intentional interference. 

Here umpires have to determine intent and OH MY GOD IT WAS DAMN OBVIOUS HE WAS INTENTIONALLY GETTING IN THE WAY.  I mentioned before his path was not toward first it was toward getting in the way. I mean COME ON 

 

It's HIGHLY questionable coming from the RHB box, from the LHB box it's a joke. And yet the umpires said it wasn't intentional. They got this part of the call completely wrong. This isn't even close and any analyst or person trying to defend it is lying to either both themselves and you, or just you.

*In contrast to a throw where usually the throw is around the basepaths so you can tell where everyone was and award extra bases using that information.