On Sunday the Kansas City Royals and Houston Astros played at Minute Maid. In the bottom of the second, Tony Kemp was batting with the bases loaded and one out when Kemp’s swing made contact with the mitt of Royals’ catcher Drew Butera. Plate umpire Lance Barrett ruled the ball dead because it was a […]
I have advocated in my spring training presentations that the pop-up slide is an excellent technique to help break up the double play at second base in a force situation. Because of the 2016 sliding regulations under rule 6.01 (j), runners obviously do not have the liberal opportunity they had in the past when breaking […]
If a manager wants to challenge multiple situations in the same play, what is the proper way to have the field umpires communicate this to the Command Center? The manager should tell the field umpires the situations he wants challenged. It should be done in layers at the same time. Does a tag attempt […]
With so many head-first sliding runners in baseball there are more fielders who will drop a knee in front of the base to keep the fielder from touching the bag. Here, however, we are not talking about the home plate collision rule. In this case, we are discussing a play at any base where the […]
Is it a ball or a strike? Only your umpire knows! A crazy strike three was recently called in a minor league game between the Hartford Yard Goats (Rockies) and Binghamton Rumble Ponies (Mets) when the pitcher, Cory Burns, stumbled during his delivery and the pitch rolled towards the first base line well away from […]
A fielder is not permitted to block a baserunner from going to a base or block the base unless he is making a play on the runner. Sometimes an infielder will drop his knee in front of the base while awaiting a throw, this is a legal play. But if there is no play being made on the runner and the fielder blocks his path to the base, the umpire should call obstruction and award the runner the next base.
When a batter is in a bunting position with his bat extended over the plate and the pitcher delivers a wild pitch nowhere near the strike zone but the batter never pulls the bat back, is it a strike on the batter? No, it is a strike on the batter only if he makes an attempt to make contact with the pitch. Sometimes the home plate umpire will need to ask a base umpire for help to determine if the batter actually attempted to make contact with the pitch.