So here's what happened: Braves manager Fredi Gonzalez was angry because he believes the umpires did not properly enforce an unwritten rule , the so-called "neighborhood play," when they overturned a call based on that unwritten rule (which isn't an out according to the actual rules) when they weren't supposed to overturn that call (which isn't supposed to be an out) because it's not a reviewable call (even though MLB seemed to suggest it actually is reviewable).
Got it?
This is the kind of absurdity you get only in baseball. As the AJC’s David O’Brien wrote about the replay rule: “It doesn’t eliminate umpires using their own interpretations of what can and can’t be reviewed.”
Why should anyone be surprised by that? Many of baseball's "rules" are enforced based on the whims of umpires and the acceptance of players (and MLB) rather than the actual rules in the book. The neighborhood play is one of the many egregious examples of this incongruity, perhaps surpassed in its silliness only by the rule prohibiting players and managers from arguing judgment calls. Yes, that's an actual rule, 9.02(a): "Any umpire's decision which involves judgment. . . is final. No player, manager, coach or substitute shall object to any such judgment decisions."
OK, then.
With the neighborhood play the umpire awards an out on a double play if it looked like it "would have been" an out if the pivot man hadn't been trying to quickly get out of the way of the advancing runner. Thus a fielder can turn a double play without actually touching the bag or by touching the bag and then stepping off before actually receiving the ball. Sometimes fielders get the call even when they are in a different zip code from the base's "neighborhood."
By rule, this should not be an out because a force out requires the fielder with the ball to touch the base . . . except when it doesn’t. The neighborhood play is accepted as an effort to protect fielders from being injured by overaggressive base runners trying to break up a double play. But there’s already a rule in the book for that:
"If, in the judgment of the umpire, a base runner willfully and deliberately interferes with a batted ball or a fielder in the act of fielding a batted ball with the obvious intent to break up a double play, the ball is dead. The umpire shall call the runner out for interference and also call out the batter-runner because of the action of his teammate. . . . The objective of this rule is to penalize the offensive team for deliberate, unwarranted, unsportsmanlike action by the runner in leaving the baseline for the obvious purpose of crashing the pivot man on a double play, rather than trying to reach the base. Obviously this is an umpire's judgment play."
Obviously, umpires have decided that they’d rather allow the neighborhood play (which contradicts the force out rule) than enforce the interference rule (which could be interpreted liberally to prevent base runners from crashing into pivot men). It’s also clear that baseball would rather allow the neighborhood play remain unwritten rather than change its rulebook to reflect the reality that the force out rule is not being enforced uniformly.
Now technology and the new replay rule are casting sunshine on the ridiculousness of this unwritten rule. The replay rules requires umpires to look at plays in which a fielder clearly did not step on base to make a force out. But baseball decided that the neighborhood play was exempt from replay scrutiny.
In other words, a system designed to get calls right does not allow umpires to overturn am obviously wrong call as defined by the official rules because an unwritten rule takes precedence. But in the instance of the Braves-Mets game it appears MLB decided the umpires could use replay to decide whether the play was a neighboorhood play and then decide if that unwritten rule needs to be followed.
Technology is casting the same harsh light on another rule that's applied outside the definition in the book: the strike zone. Data for the official strike zone is now widely available because of sophisticated Pitch f/x cameras present in all ballparks, and depictions of it are common on baseball telecasts.
The rules of baseball define the strike zone as:
“[T]hat area over home plate the upper limit of which is a horizontal line at the midpoint between the top of the shoulders and the top of the uniform pants, and the lower level is a line at the hollow beneath the kneecap. The Strike Zone shall be determined from the batter’s stance as the batter is prepared to swing at a pitched ball.”
There’s even a handy diagram in the rulebook to illustrate the strike zone. That strike zone is, of course, ignored in favor of a system in which each umpire has his own strike zone that he selectively enforces depending on the circumstances.
One of those circumstances is the count. According to a study of more than 1 million pitches by Etan Green and David P. Daniels:
"[T]he strike zone expands in three-ball counts and shrinks in two-strike counts. It also shrinks again when the preceding pitch in the at-bat was a called strike. To put it another way, on close calls, umpires are unlikely to call a fourth ball, a third strike, or a second strike in a row. Umpires call balls and strikes as if they don't want to be noticed."
This is a conclusion that even undermines players’ grudging acceptance of strike zone variance between umpires as long as they are consistent from batter to batter and during an at-bat.
Another study that does the same is one by Columbia University's Jerry W. Kim and Brayden G. King of Northwestern that finds, even after controlling for other variables: "[U]mpires make more errors in favor of All-Star pitchers than pitchers who have never been selected for an All-Star Game — about 17 percent more."
There’s always going to be some variance in how an objective rule is interpreted. But in the case of the strike zone there is no attempt to interpret a rule, just an accepted practice of ignoring it in favor of the subjective judgment of umpires, which is influenced by factors other than whether they believe a pitch is really a ball or a strike. With the neighborhood play there is a conscious decision to ignore clear instances of the force out and fail to enforce the interference rule in favor of a “rule” that is not in the book.
In a story about Kim and King’s strike-zone study, The New York Times quotes umpire Fieldin Culbreth as saying: “I don’t know the science . . . and I wouldn’t understand it even if you tried to explain it to me. I umpire from here and here,” he said, indicating his head and his heart.
I thought the idea was to umpire from the rulebook. Only in baseball is willful ignorance of data that could lead to better calls and the sanctioning of unofficial rules accepted as part of the game.
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