[Rich]

Originally posted by akalsey
After one of my pitchers hit two batters in two pitches (accidentally -- these are 8 year olds) an ump informed me that if he hit another batter, I would have to remove the pitcher for safety reasons.

I'm on the fence on that one. As an ump and parent, I understand wanting to enforce safety. As a coach, I didn't like it since he's my best pitcher. He'd struk out four straight batters in 19 pitches before that. He just had two pitches get away from him and hit consecutive batters.

It ended up working okay in the end since he didn't hit anyone else, but I'm wondering from a rules perspective, what's the opinion of this group about an ump taking that sort of action?

OOO. Protest. Challenge the umpire on this.