I am a young player and I have a question regarding the balk rule that I can't seem to find anywhere else. Here is the situation, a RHP is from the stretch position and there is a runner on first. Can he pick up his left leg as if he is doing his leg kick, then rotate on his heel and throw over to first if his knee never crosses his body? It is kind of like a LHP doing it (The move Pettite uses) except it is a RHP. My coach tells me this is fine as long as your knee doesn't cross but my thinking is as a baserunner I've always been told when you are stealing on a RHP go once you see him pick up his left leg. You could never see if the RHP crossed his knee back or not from first and this would make stealing on a RHP even harder than stealing on a lefty if this is true. Can someone please tell me the right awnser?

The knee is irrelevant. If he picks up his non-pivot foot (left for a RHP), and rotates on his pivot (right for RHP) and steps toward 1B he can make a throw. The move with his left foot needs to be continuous, ie pick it up, rotate on pivot and step to first. If his non-pivot foot goes behind the rubber, he must go home with the pitch.

I'll pinch hit for Tee:

You will almost NEVER see this move in the pros. Yes, I know, the rule book says the pitcher can do three things from the rubber: Pitch, Step off, Step and throw to a base. Yada yada yada.

The reality of the situation is, though, this move is easily balked on a RHP. To successfully pull this off he can't make a motion that appears to be a move home. Evans covers this very well in his balk video.

The RHP would almost have to "glide" his left foot over towards first in a smooth and continous motion, step and throw. If he lifted his knee towards home or even straight up, many, if not most upper level umpires will call a balk for starting his motion to home and throwing to first.


This is why most ML pitchers step-off or use the jump turn or jab-step.

Just a thought.

He could come to an open set position and get away with lifting his free foot while stepping towart first. But you don't see too many pitchers using this set.

I don't recall seeing this move very often at all, anywhere.