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You Are the Scorer: Reader query (with a video!)

Joe Gray — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 16:32:38 +0000

Thanks to CJ Evans from the Chelmsford Clippers for this question. For the first time ever on the column we have a video to go with it, which is embedded below.

The descriptive text and question posted in the accompanying text on YouTube is as follows:

“British baseball play, pop-up to pitcher, runners on 1 and 3. Runner at 1 goes on contact with none out and gets doubled off trying to get back. Runner at 3 comes home on the play and scores without a throw. Question – how do you score it?”

British baseball play, pop-up to pitcher, runners on 1 and 3.

Runner at 1 goes on contact with none out and gets doubled off trying to get back.

Runner at 3 comes home on the play and scores without a throw.

Question – how do you score it?

In particular, CJ wants to know the following:

“Should 1B be charged with an error for not throwing?”
“Can there be a sac fly on an infield pop-up?”
“Does the pitcher get charged with an earned run? (After this play there is a walk and then a ground out so he would have been stranded if the following plays bore out.)”

These are my thoughts on those three questions. If anyone concurs or disagrees, please feel free to chip in with a comment.

This is a mental mistake so no error is charged. (Rule 10.12(a)(1) Comment: “The official scorer shall not score mental mistakes or misjudgments as errors unless a specific rule prescribes otherwise.” I am not aware of a rule in the book overriding this general statement.)
A sacrifice fly should never be scored for a catch taken in the infield. (Rule 10.08(d): “Score a sacrifice fly when, before two are out, the batter hits a ball in flight handled by an outfielder or an infielder running in the outfield in fair or foul territory.”)
Yes, because no error is charged on the play.

So it goes in the book as a double-play comprising a fly-out to 1 and a 1-3 put-out, with the run being scored on the play, and no error being charged. Thus, the batter is charged with a time at-bat and no-one gets a run batted in. Also note that the runner who is put out trying to return to first does not get charged with a caught stealing because the action occurred on a ball in play (as soon as the ball is put in play, all stolen base/caught stealing considerations are voided). I mention this last point because it was a question I got from a rookie scorer on the Leicester Blue Sox a couple of weekends back at the Herts Spring League.

To post a question, please contact me by email if you have my address or by using the About > Get in contact functionality of the site if not. I’ll turn the best ones into posts for the site. Alternatively, to hunt through all the You Are the Scorer questions, including the 50 questions that kicked the forum off, click here.

You Are the Scorer: A forum for baseball scoring questions

Joe Gray — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 12:00:27 +0000

Happy New Year to one and all!

You Are the Scorer started out life as a weekly scoring quiz, with a new question appearing every Friday at noon. Once the ideas started to dry up (after 50 questions), I gave the posers a rest and used the weekly post as a thread for queries instead. As it happened, some of the questions I was getting through this were more interesting than the ones I was originally posing. So the You Are the Scorer feature is now going to become more of a forum for baseball scoring questions.

To post a question, please contact me by email if you have my address or using the About > Get in contact functionality of the site if not. I’ll turn the best ones into posts for the site.

We still feel that it would be good to give you something to read every Friday lunchtime on BaseballGB, so an alternative idea we have is to offer what we think has been a web highlight of the previous week’s internet postings. It might be on Major League Baseball, international baseball, or British baseball, but whatever the topic you should always be directed to an interesting read.

To hunt through all You Are the Scorer questions, including the 50 questions that kicked the forum off, click here.

You Are the Scorer: Thread for queries

Joe Gray — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 12:00:34 +0000