Quote:
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Originally Posted by TussAgee11
"The Strike Zone is that 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 top of the knees. The Strike Zone shall be determined from the batter's stance as the batter is prepared to swing at a pitched ball."
My interpretation (as taught to me by a clinician {and we know they can be wrong}, is that this means that the vertical aspect is to be determined by the batter's normal batting stance.
Wouldn't this also mean that it is the batter, not the front of the plate, that determines the point at which a pitch is determined a strike and a ball, and nowhere else?
Again, this was my clinician's viewpoint that has been put on me. Don't bash me too bad. Just show me the light. Seems as though this viewpoint is wrong.
Its really nitpicking, but I want to be the best!
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This may be way too simplistic, but here’s how I interpret it as a layman.
Let’s build a strike zone out of a block of wood.
We’ll start by digging up the plate and replacing it with a hydraulic hoist shaped to the exact dimensions of a plate, making sure its perfectly level. Now we can raise and lower the “zone” however much we choose.
Now lets get a block of wood 6’X6’X6’. The 1st thing we have to do is get it milled to exactly the same shape as the plate, and mill the bottom so its perfectly flat. The reason for that is, the rule says “that area over home plate”. Since we don’t yet have a height, it will be just a 6’ tall home plate.
Now we need a batter because we need to know the upper and lower limits of the zone. We’ll put him in a uniform, and have him take his “stance” as if he were “preparing to hit a pitched ball”, then measure from the ground to the “hollow beneath the knee cap”. (We’re using OBR. ;-)
Now we know the lower limit of the strike zone, so we raise the jack until the milled bottom of the block of wood is exactly that height.
Next we measure from the ground to “midpoint between the top of the shoulders and the top of the uniform pants” to get the upper limit of the zone, then cut the top of the block of wood and mill it like we did with the bottom.
Notice, we didn’t move the block of wood because we didn’t have to. The rules don’t relate where the batter’s standing in relation to the plate. All they say is how to define the upper and lower limits of the zone. Those limits could just as easily be measured in Timbuktu or that place with the nasty name in Egypt. All that matters is that the measurements are taken with the batter “preparing to hit a pitched ball”.
Step back and you see the strike zone for that batter.
Is your clinician wrong? Heck NO! We determined the vertical aspect exactly as described in the rules(OBR, not what the clinician told you.;-)
Of course, if you’re using a different rule book that describes the vertical aspect differently than OBR, that’s what you’d use. Unless LL Inc. has changed their rule since 1996, it goes from the batter’s arm pits to the top of the knees. I don’t have access to all of the different rule books so I can’t say what any specific one uses. That’s why in discussions like this, I stick with OBR.
As to whether or not your view point is “wrong”, IMHO it is, but only partially, and that’s only in that you seem to be using the position of the batter in relation to the plate to determine when to call the pitch.
To me, that hasn’t got a thing to do with it. Up in the box, even with the plate, or standing with both feet on the back line will not change the vertical aspect of the strike zone. The pitch has to be called “over home plate”.
It might help to think about what happens if a batter thinks he has been granted time, but hasn’t, then steps out of the box while the P is delivering the ball. OBR 6.08 says
If the pitcher pitches, the umpire shall call "Ball" or "Strike," as the case may be.
How can that happen if the batter isn’t there? It can happen because the ump has already determined the vertical aspect. Those umps have computer-like minds ya know. ;-)
I’d like to reiterate that everything I’m saying is only my opinion.