Non-Listed Players

[ilyazhito]

Rich, I agree with your logic on the baseball rule about substitutions not conflating the batting order with the roster.

Bandit, do you work basketball as well? You may be confusing the requirement of having a team submit its batting order to the home plate umpire in baseball with the basketball requirement of having a team submit its roster to the official scorer at least 10 minutes before the scheduled tip-off time.

Strictly speaking, the "list substitutes on the batting order" is a rule that has no penalty for non-compliance (unlike the basketball rule where one administrative technical foul is assessed for entering a player not present on the roster into the game [that foul covers all instances of a player not in the roster entering]). Apparently, the intent of the rule is to allow all possible players to enter a game (including returning JV players playing in the varsity game) without requiring the coach to exhaustively list everyone who could conceivably play.

In basketball, the roster size is limited to between 10-15 people, so it is possible to list everyone who could play on a single roster (including possible JV call-ups to the varsity game), but in baseball, an entire team can easily include 20-25 players. When you add a JV team to the varsity team, there would be no space to list all the players who could play in the varsity game. Therefore, a requirement to list all players for a baseball game would be nonsensical. This is why a coach must only list his batting order (Players in the batting order are locked into position, but anyone who is eligible can substitute into any position in the order. Because only starters can return to the game, it is not necessary to list substitutes, who cannot legally come back after leaving the game.)