u/DickBottalico

Score is 1-0 Oklahoma with Texas-East batting in the top of the fourth. Runners on second and third with 1 out. The batter hits a foul pop up slightly behind first base, but because the infield was in, the first baseman is running backward. He makes the catch. Runners tag properly, and the infielder is running the ball in toward home plate.

The runner on second now wanders about halfway to third base to draw the attention, first baseman panics and makes a throw to second, which allows the runner on third to score. Throw to the plate is late, and the runner on second goes to third.

Normal little league play. However, after the first pitch to the next batter, the umpires decide to call time and review the play. They claimed it was a no-pitch and the challenge occurred before that pitch. Whatever.

They review the play and decide the runner on second left early and tell the coach to appeal at second. Pitcher steps on the rubber, throws to second, runner is called out. They go to commercial with the score 1-0 and then the umpires delay the game again because they didn’t count the run.

Finally they get it right, and the league supervisor or whoever realized the run should count, and ESPN shows the replay: the runner on second never even left early. Brutal display of umpiring all around.

Luzardo has 91 pitches with a man on first base, one out, in the 7th inning. He’s facing the ninth batter in the order. He walks him on seven pitches, and RHP Seth Johnson is warming in the bulllen. The top of the order is R-R-L-L for the Marlins, beginning with Lopez and Hernandez (who just homered in the fifth inning). The score is 6-3.

Hey, maybe just let the righty face the two righties? The tying run is at the plate. If Luzardo gets Lopez, he still has to face another righty, who just homered off him.

Now Luzardo is at 98 pitches. Two pitches later it’s 6-4, and Johnson comes into the game to face Hernandez. Pop out, yay. Then he has to face the lefties. Walk, single, tie game. And then he gets the next batter, a righty.

Now Conine can pinch hit in the next inning and hit the homer in a spot of the order which shouldn’t have even been reached by that point.

That point of the lineup combined with Luzardo’s handedness+pitch count is as basic as it gets for a manager, and he blew it. We might miss the playoffs. This manager isn’t going to suddenly improve after a decade of coaching/managing experience.

Enjoy the off-day/weekend, and hope for the best in Baltimore.

Last night’s Phillies-Yankees national broadcast had three former players as color analysts: a witty Philadelphia legend who is smarter than he lets on, a hall-of-fame lock Joey Votto, and some other guy. It was fun but not great, so I was looking forward to tonight’s color analyst with a brilliant baseball mind, former first base coach Ruben Amaro.

I was not disappointed, because he was locked in. Here are his highlights:

- In the first inning, he compared backup outfielder Bryan de La Cruz to LeBron James.

- In the bottom of second inning, Tom McCarthy asked the trivia question, designed to Stump The Fans: which starting pitcher holds the Phillies record for most consecutive victories against the Marlins? Ruben responds with Cole Hamels. Then he says “I’m probably wrong, I’m not very good at these.”

- One pitch later, Amaro says “It could be Jamie Moyer.” Two pitches later, McCarthy declares “you know what, we’ll just give the answer right now, because Ruben got it right. He guessed ‘Cole Hamels and/or Jamie Moyer.’ Do you want to choose one?”

- Wheeler comes set on the 3-1 pitch, Amaro replies “I’ll say Cole.” The answer is Jamie Moyer.

- Same inning, Marlins now up 4-2. Otto Lopez scorches a liner into the right-centerfield gap. Justin Crawford, playing straightaway centerfield, has to sprint immediately to his left to get anywhere close to the ball. Because Lopez is a righty batter, the line drive tailed farther and farther away from Crawford as he sprinted toward it. Crawford’s horizontal diving attempt was unsuccessful. Did Ruben say “damn, Wheeler is giving up rockets tonight, and not even a speedster like Crawford could reach that one”? No, Ruben said Crawford should have taken a step back toward the fence instead of diving for it, to catch the ball on a bounce. Unfortunately, teleportation was not invented by a 22-year-old baseball player, and Lopez earned an RBI triple.

- In the bottom of the fifth inning, a Marlins batter hits a routine pop up behind third base. Alec Bohm immediately raises his arms to call for the ball, and he catches it in short left field. Deciding to blame the shortstop for yielding to Bohm’s call for the pop-up, Amaro says “I’m kinda surprised that Trea Turner didn’t run behind third base and catch it. I guess he thought it would be shallower.” McCarthy guesses that Turner simply assumed it would be caught. Amaro, who played both outfield and infield in his career, could not fathom that defenders are allowed to talk to each other.

The Phillies end the fifth inning trailing 5-2, providing little non-Amaro entertainment. Since it seemed unlikely Ruben would continue his hot streak of Buffoon Baseball from the first half of the game, instead of watching the end, I decided to rewind to the second inning to get those quotes right.

With two outs in the bottom of the last inning, and it’s bases loaded, what happens if the guy runs to second base in excitement, touches it, then runs toward home for the celebration and is tagged before the runner touches home plate? He’s out and no run scores right?

Just a reminder what the New York media has perpetuated for so many years about “Philly fan behavior.” The guy who wrote this piece is a Rangers/Knicks fan who is now the editor of a similar rag. I just scrolled through their stories from the past 3 weeks and guess what? No moralizing about the behavior of NY fans. In fact no mention of their behavior since May 26 when it was a celebratory piece of “New York’s hottest party” until today’s story about “euphoria in NYC.”

Kinda funny to see the rest of the country finally understand that the whole Philly trope has just been name calling from NY the whole time.

There was a play in the Orioles game today where the batter hit a chopper to second base and the runner yielded the baseline and went around the defender making a play on the batted ball. My question is, what happens if the runner had continued running straight to second, and the defender fields the ball before the runner arrives.

Defender bobbles the ball once or twice, and the runner then makes contact with the defender and dislodges the ball. Runner goes to second and batter is on first.

Is there interference on this play, or does the bobble mean it’s no longer a batted ball and the runner’s requirement to yield the baseline to the defender is satisfied?

Okay let’s say a runner on third base scores on a wild pitch (it’s a deep backstop so the catcher is kinda lollygagging with nobody else on base because he knows it’s impossible to get the out at home). And similarly the runner kinda loses complete focus and begins to mentally check out. He steps over the plate without touching it, and jogs into his dugout as the catcher is finally picking up the ball. The catcher’s coach starts screaming, hey he didn’t touch home plate! Catcher looks around confused and kinda shrugs because he doesn’t know what to do without a runner. Coach yells “step on home plate with the ball and raise your glove to the umpire!”

Catcher follows instructions, steps on home plate with the ball (which is still live because nobody ever killed it), clearly indicates his intent to appeal.

Do I call him out? I know the traditional process of the appeal is to step on/off the rubber to put the ball back into play, but is that necessary if the ball is still live? And are the catcher’s nonverbal cues of eye contact and clear intent to appeal without saying anything enough to call the out?

Is this actually in the rules, or is it a mere umpire mechanic that prevents the home plate umpire from signaling a swinging strike, and then asking for help if he’s unsure? It makes no sense to me that I can say “no swing” and also admit I’m unsure, but I can’t say “I think he swung but let’s ask for help.”