Major League Baseball announced Friday that its rules committee had re-interpreted the “transfer rule” and was going back to defining a catch as a catch - no longer penalizing the fielder if he drops the ball on the transfer.
Braves second baseman Dan Uggla was as happy as anybody about the return to normalcy. He was the one charged with an error Monday night against the Marlins after umpires used video replay to rule that a drop he made on the transfer of a potential double play ball cost him the force-out at second base as well.
The call changed a first-and-third one-out situation into a bases-loaded nobody out situation. Reliever Jordan Walden pitched out of the jam and the Braves went on to win 4-2 in 10 innings.
“It is good news,” Uggla said. “Some things are just better left the way they are, that being one of them.”
Uggla, his fellow middle infielder Andrelton Simmons and Braves manager Fredi Gonzalez were all glad to see the rule changed now, rather than waiting until after the season.
“I think they realized that it was not working the way they wanted it to work, so why not change it?” Gonzalez said. “We have that capability or the power to do it. I applaud Major League Baseball for doing that. They said, ‘Ok, wait a second, let’s not get carried away with this, and let’s change it.’ Get it back to a normal transfer and hopefully we don’t have to worry about that anymore.”
Instant replay has changed the way major league umpires are interpreting the “transfer” play, and Dan Uggla and the Braves learned that the hard way on Monday night.
Uggla had fielded a throw from shortstop Andrelton Simmons on a potential double play ball off the bat of Giancarlo Stanton in the seventh inning. He bobbled the ball on the transfer and failed to complete the double play, but second base umpire Marvin Hudson called the runner out at second base, ruling in live action Uggla had control of the ball on the catch.
After a video replay, umpires overturned the call, leaving the bases loaded for Jordan Walden, who eventually worked out of the jam.
“It’s just a bad rule,” said Uggla, who was charged with an error on the play. “To change something like that that’s been since the beginning of time, I don’t agree with it.”
Uggla will find infielders in agreement all around baseball, who wonder now how long they have to have control of the ball to “establish the validity of the catch” as the rule states. Similar plays have been overturned in places like Seattle, Kansas City, and Boston.
“I think that particular play, the transfer play, makes it look worse in replay than it does in real life,” Braves manager Fredi Gonzalez said. “It makes it look like, ‘Man he really dropped it,’ when he didn’t.”
Gonzalez said the Braves received a league-wide memo last week, giving teams assurances that Major League Baseball officials would review the rule. He’s also gotten assurances from Braves president John Schuerholz, who is chairman of MLB’s replay committee, that replay is something that will be evaluated and changed as they go in this three-year provisional period.
“I have confidence in our people that it’s going to get better,” Gonzalez said.
Gonzalez said he would like to see the transfer rule differentiate between thrown balls and batted balls, with infielders being given more leeway on throws.
“Let the actual thrown ball – the double play - let it be where it has been for a hundred million years,” Gonzalez said.
